The ‘Third World Literature’ category presumed a primordial civilizational difference from the West.

Evidence

In the fullness of time, the literary documents of this other kind of cultural production would be called ‘Third World Literature’, within a discourse that would speak of a fundamental, generic difference between West and non-West, redefined now as a binary opposition between First and Third Worlds – and an opposition, moreover, which was said to be partly an effect of colonialism but partly a matter also of civilizational, primordial Difference. If the whole history of Western textualities, from Homer to Olivia Manning, was a history of Orientalist ontology, Third World Literature was prima facie the site of liberationist practice. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 100

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the origin and theoretical baggage of the ‘Third World Literature’ category and its paired binary with Orientalism.
• XREF: connects to: Third World Literature is a metropolitan fabrication, not a pre-existing category — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 192; 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

Related

• Third World Literature is a metropolitan fabrication, not a pre-existing category (similarity 0.89)
• Third World Literature emerged only through the mediating archive of Western languages (similarity 0.89)
• Third World Literature as a category is built on Western language archives (similarity 0.89)
• Cultural nationalism remains the constitutive ideology of Third World literary theory. (similarity 0.87)
• Cultural nationalism is constitutive of postcolonial theory’s theoretical stances. (similarity 0.86)
• Claims that homogenize ‘Third World Literature’ obscure the imperialist-determined fortunes of its producing bourgeoisie (similarity 0.86)
• The category ‘Third World’ has polemical but no theoretical status (similarity 0.86)
• The Third World Literature category emerged from postwar metropolitan migration, not from textual accumulation (similarity 0.86)
• The category ‘Third World Literature’ emerged only when ex-colonial migrants demanded metropolitan middle-class inclusion (similarity 0.86)
• The original Third World canon meant pre-colonial texts produced outside the West (similarity 0.85)
• Third World literary theory’s rise marked retreat from activist anti-imperialism (similarity 0.85)
• Third World literary theory effaces Marxism-rooted radical cultural heritage (similarity 0.85)
• Local oral literatures resist absorption into any unified Third World Literature category (similarity 0.84)
• The ‘Third World Literature’ category originated amid socialist retreat and bourgeois-nationalist resurgence. (similarity 0.84)
• Even marginal texts suffer whenever nation-theme questions dominate Third World reading. (similarity 0.83)