Postcolonial theorists of elite origin mobilize colonial-era capital to compete within Western academia.

Evidence

The irony of this personally felt and highly .valorized biographical detail is that Said has given us, probably without Guha’s consent, the portrait of a typical upper-layer bourgeois; for it is that kind of individual who has typically mobilized the accumulations achieved during the colonial period to acquire the most modern Western technology, to launch upon collaborative competition with the metropolitan bourgeoisie, from the margins of global capitalism. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 883

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reading purpose: Ahmad reads the credentialed exile-theorist position as class complicity, the heart of his materialist counter to discourse-first postcolonial theory. — connects to: Postcolonial Orientalism preserved colonialist residues under altered forms of power. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 467
• QUESTION: This classification of the theorist as ‘upper-layer bourgeois’ is deliberately offered without Guha’s consent — is Ahmad fair to the actual class positions, or is he flattening biography to score a rhetorical point?

Broader Connections

• Postcolonial Orientalism preserved colonialist residues under altered forms of power. #expands (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 467