Structural linguistic asymmetry makes the third-world text unknowable to metropolitan theorists

Evidence

Rare would be a modern intellectual in Asia or Africa who does not know at least one European language; equ~lly rare would be, on the other side, a major literary theorist in Europe or the United States who has ever bothered with an Asian or African language; and the enormous industry of translation which circulates texts among the advanced capitalist countries grinds erratically and slowly when it comes to translation from Asian or African languages. The upshot is that major literary traditionssuch as those of Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, Telegu and half a dozen others from India aloneremain, beyond a few texts here and there, virtually unknown to the American literary theorist. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 376

Categorization

• QUESTION: This asymmetry is the material underpinning that any strategic-essentialist collective claim must contend with — does it also hold for the reverse direction as the essay implies?
• XREF: connects to: Metropolitan institutions assemble and control most knowledge produced about the Third World; Third World Literature as a category is built on Western language archives; Local oral literatures resist absorption into any unified Third World Literature category — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 318 (+16 more)

Broader Connections

• Metropolitan theory inflates single genres into universal forms for the Third World #corroborates (0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 110
• Third World Literature emerged only through the mediating archive of Western languages #corroborates (0.82) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 126
• World literature theory fits macro-trends but cannot capture each text’s distinct form #corroborates (0.80) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 54
• World literature trades unequally between a dominant center and periphery #expands (0.78)
• The Third World Literature canon marginalizes texts outside its authorized questions #complicates (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 211
• Representing a pre-colonial past is impossible within the metaphysic of representation #corroborates (0.75) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 44
• Linguistic form lags behind radical historical change #qualifies (0.75)