Postmodern ironic distance from visionary engagement can secretly reproduce political quietism.

Evidence

To be amused, in retrospect, at the youthfulness of one’s own youth is one thing; but to learn from maturity that a visionary relation with reality is itself folly, that literature is an antidote to such follies, is to participate, perhaps unwittingly, in precisely the kind of quietism which Rushdie himself seems formally to reject in other parts of this brief essay and in many other wnttngs. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 609

Categorization

• XREF: This parallels the core bind of strategic essentialism: a stance adopted ironically may still perform (here, intellectually) the very quietism it disavows. Also echoes Spivak’s worry about subaltern collapse. — connects to: Dismissing past political optimism as folly is itself a kind of quietism. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 266; The masses hold a contradictory consciousness that can produce political passivity — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1199; Ironically distanced postmodern attitude is sold as protection from fanaticism and terror — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 16
• SEED: An essay comparing ironic-distance-as-refuge across Rushdie’s essays and strategic essentialism’s self-canceling performativity.

Broader Connections

• Dismissing past political optimism as folly is itself a kind of quietism. #corroborates (0.88) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 266
• The masses hold a contradictory consciousness that can produce political passivity #exemplifies (0.78) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1199