Poststructuralist critique rejects nationalism wholesale instead of judging its specific historical forms

Evidence

The newly dominant position of poststructuralist ideology is the fundamental enabling condition for a literary theory which debunks nationalism not on the familiar Marxist ground that nationalism in the present century has frequently suppressed questions of gender and class and has itself been frequently complicit with all kinds of obscurantisms and revanchist positions, but in the patently postmodernist way of debunking all efforts to speak of origins, collectivities, determinate historical projects. The upshot, of course, is that critics working within the postsrructuralist problematic no longer distinguish, in any foregrounded way, between the progressive and retrograde forms of nationalism with reference to particular histories, nor do they examine the even more vexed question of how progressive and retrograde elements may be (and often are) combined within particular nationalist trajectories; what gets debunked, rather, is nationalism as such, in more or less the same apocalyptic manner in which cultural nationalism was, only a few years earlier, declared the determinate answer to imperialism. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 169

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Foucault ‘race-struggle’ counter-history motif — Ahmad positions poststructuralism as refusing determinate historical projects entirely, which bears on Spivak’s strategic essentialism debate. — connects to: Rejecting Marxism foreclosed self-critique, so poststructuralism replaced rather than corrected nationalism — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 70; Literary theory’s rejection of nationalism mirrors poststructuralism’s rise — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 62; Poststructuralist Third World theory arose as a substitute for failed nationalist ideology — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 274 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Nationalism can only be judged through its particular instances, not abstraction #expands (0.82) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 45
• Rejecting Marxism foreclosed self-critique, so poststructuralism replaced rather than corrected nationalism #qualifies (0.78) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 70
• Poststructuralist Third World theory arose as a substitute for failed nationalist ideology #qualifies (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 274
• Nationalism lacks fixed essence; its value depends on who wields it #corroborates (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 395
• Literary theory’s rejection of nationalism mirrors poststructuralism’s rise #corroborates (0.72) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 62