Poststructuralism’s rise in colonial literary theory conceals rather than explains its material-economic context
Evidence
My starring point in the present book, briefly put, is that the sizeable changes we have witnessed in the situation(s) of literary theory over the past quarter-century have occurred within the context of monumental and extremely rapid shifts in the economic and political orderings of the world, and that the surrender, in rapid succession, first to a Third-Worldist kind of nationalism and then to deconstructionto poststructuralism generally, in facton the part of that branch of literary theory which is most engaged with questions of colony and empire conceals, instead of explaining, the relationships between literature, literary theory and that world of which these purport to be the literature and the theory. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 163
Categorization
- XREF: This is Ahmad’s materialist thesis framing the reader’s entire project on strategic essentialism — the claim that discourse-first theory (poststructuralism, deconstruction) evades class/material structures directly parallels the reader’s core research question. Connects directly to the reading purpose. — connects to: Postcolonial literary theory’s rapid shift from nationalism to poststructuralism concealed material world dynamics — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 163; Postcolonial literary theory obscures the political and economic materialities determining it — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 43; Post-colonialism differs from post-modernism by keeping grand narratives of emancipation alive — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 877 (+7 more)
- QUESTION: Ahmad claims this theory branch ‘conceals, instead of explaining’ the material context. Worth chasing: what precisely is being concealed about colony and empire by the turn from cultural nationalism to poststructuralism?
Broader Connections
- Postcolonial literary theory’s rapid shift from nationalism to poststructuralism concealed material world dynamics
#corroborates(0.95) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 163 - Postcolonial literary theory obscures the political and economic materialities determining it
#corroborates(0.90) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 43 - Postcolonial theory recasts decolonization as a literary-critical rather than political contest
#expands(0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 393 - Post-colonialism differs from post-modernism by keeping grand narratives of emancipation alive
#qualifies(0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 877 - Said’s colonial and postcolonial intellectual categories erase concrete non-metropolitan trajectories
#complicates(0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 858 - Poststructural literary theory’s nationalism critique tracked the national-bourgeois state’s rise and fall
#expands(0.70) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 184