Said’s career bridged liberal academia and avant-garde theory on an anti-Marxist basis

Evidence

One of Said’s notable contributions to the American Left, in fact, is that he, perhaps more than anyone else, has taught this Left how to build bridges between the liberal mainstream and avant-garde theory. The range of erudition has been a considerable asset, though not everyone who wrote from the Marxist position was necessarily less erudite. And there certainly is an eloquence, a style. But the notable feature, underlying all the ambivalences, is the anti-Marxism and the construction of a whole critical apparatus for defining a postmodern kind of anti-colonialism. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 430

Categorization

• XREF: Ahmad’s broader thesis that postmodern anti-colonialism required rejecting the Marxist anti-imperialist tradition — connects to his critiques elsewhere in the chapter. — connects to: Said’s work embodies the contradictions of the literary theory tradition

Related

• Anti-colonial critique before Said was overwhelmingly Marxist-affiliated (similarity 0.86)
• Said centrally shaped literary theory on colonialism after Orientalism (similarity 0.84)
• Said’s critique of Orientalism mirrors the procedures of his adversaries. (similarity 0.82)
• Said’s work instantiates every major phase Ahmad traces in literary theory. (similarity 0.82)
• Said’s later essays reversed his Orientalism critique into a desire for Western location (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial discourse analysis emerged from radical theory’s retreat from immediate activist struggles (similarity 0.81)
• Said made cultural-imperialism critique respectable by speaking the university’s language (similarity 0.81)
• The 1960s metropolitan Left wrongly conflated anti-colonialism with domestic social progress. (similarity 0.80)
• Nietzschean theory retrofitted a postmodern anticolonialism that Marxist anti-imperialism already held (similarity 0.80)
• Said distanced himself from the label postcolonial in favor of anti-imperial (similarity 0.79)
• Said frames anti-imperial resistance chiefly as cultural discourse and identity (similarity 0.79)
• Said’s claim that Europeans cannot know non-Europe was a radical novelty in criticism. (similarity 0.79)
• Anti-colonial cultural critique existed for a century before Orientalism yet Said ignored it (similarity 0.79)
• Said’s account makes colonialism an effect of discourse, not material power. (similarity 0.79)
• Said studied non-Western literature only as evidence of Western empire (similarity 0.79)