Postcolonial subdisciplines emerged by distancing themselves from anti-imperialist activist politics and economics

Evidence

The cognate subdisciplines of ‘Third World Literature’ and ‘Colonial Discourse Analysis’ emerged at a rime when radical theory was in the process of distancing itself from the kind of activist culture that had started developing throughout Western Europe and North America during the period of the great anti-imperialist struggles in Indochina and Southern Africa. This distancing on the part of contemporary metropolitan radicalism from irs own immediate past has led to other kinds of distancing as well. In terms of.historical periodizarion, there appears to be in both these subdisciplines far greater interest in the colonialism of the past than in the imperialism of the present. In terms of social processes, interest has shifted from the ‘facts’ of imperialist wars and political economies of exploitation to ‘fictions’ of representation and cultural artefact. In terms of global spaces, one is hearing, as these subdisciplines now function in the United States, a lot less about the United States itself and a lot more about Britain and France. In terms of academic disciplines, much more prestige attaches now to Literature, Philosophy and radical Anthropology than to Political Economy. In terms of theoretical positions, Marxism is often dismissed as a ‘modes-of-production narrative’, a ‘totalizing system’, and so on, while engagements shift more towards Narrarology, Discourse Analysis, Deconstruction, or New History of a Foucauldian kind. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 365

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the primary reading purpose: Ahmad’s materialist critique of discourse-determinism as obscuring class structure. Connects to the Foucault Society Must Be Defended motif being traced. — connects to: Interdisciplinarity’s subversive force becomes slack pluralism once institutionalized; Anti-colonial rights advocates unwittingly armed later coercive interventions in global capitalism’s interests — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 273; Postcolonial literary theory obscures the political and economic materialities determining it — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 43 (+3 more)
• SEED: Could ground an essay on how academic prestige hierarchies — Literature and Philosophy over Political Economy — shape which political questions are even askable.

Broader Connections

• Interdisciplinarity’s subversive force becomes slack pluralism once institutionalized #complicates (0.80)
• Postcolonial literary theory obscures the political and economic materialities determining it #corroborates (0.78) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 43
• Neoliberals feared colonial anti-imperialism would morph into anti-capitalism #corroborates (0.76) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 251
• Anti-colonial rights advocates unwittingly armed later coercive interventions in global capitalism’s interests #corroborates (0.72) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 273