Shame’s canonical status rests on authorized questions about nation
Evidence
1 have referred elsewhere to the great prolixity and heterogeneity of cultural productions in our spaces, both of archival and non-archivable kinds, which simply exceed the theoretical terms of ‘Third World Literature’ Here, I want to look briefly at only one author- Salman Rushdiewho occupies a distinguished place at the very apex of ‘Third World Literature’, and at only one of his books- Shamewhich has already become something of a classic of this counter-canon. What happens to one’s own reading, I would be curious to know, if one changes, in any appreciable degree, the questions? — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 487
Categorization
- SEED: Ahmad’s test — change the questions asked of a canonical postcolonial text and see what reading results — is a reusable critical method the reader could apply to strategic essentialism’s own canonical texts (e.g., re-ask what ‘essentialism’ does once read through class rather than identity).
- XREF: Ahmad signals his heterogeneity/irreducibility argument against ‘Third World Literature’ as a category — a materialist counterpart to the discourse-determinism critique. Relevant to whether a fixed canonical identity for texts parallels a fixed essentialist identity for subjects. — connects to: Shame precedes reflection and arises from an opaque self-relation