The category ‘Third World Literature’ emerged only when ex-colonial migrants demanded metropolitan middle-class inclusion

Evidence

In other words, over the past three decades or so a vast archive of texts has accumulated, which is available to the metropolitan university to examine, explicate, categorize, classify, and judge as to its worthiness for inclusion within its curriculum and canon. At the level of this greatly expanded archive of books produced in the ex-colonial countries but written in or translated into Western languages, a direct dialogue between, let us say, a Haitian and an Indian novelist could really take place, and something called ‘Third World Literature’, with its own generic classifications and categorizations, could ensue from that archival nearness; the irony of that operation would undoubtedly be that a Third World Literature would arise on the basis of Western languages, while Third-Worldist ideology is manifestly opposed to the cultural dominance of Western countries. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 126 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

As the elite immigrant intelligentsia located more or less permanently in the metropolitan countries began appropriating this counter-canonical category as their special preserve and archive, the emphasis kept shifting, from the epochal to the modern, erasing in the process the difference between documents produced within the non-Western countries and those others which were produced by the immigrant at metropolitan locations. With the passage of time, the writings of immigrants were to become greatly privileged and were declared, in some extreme but also very influential formulations, to be the only authentic documents of resistance in our time. It was at this point that the singular ascendancy of Salman Rushdie began, and it is notable that apart from Edward Said himself, the critics who have played the key role in redefining literary Third-Worldism in relation mainly to the immigrant, and have also cemented the relationship between this immigrant phenomenon and postmodern ways of reading that archive, have usually been of Asian origin. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 142 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• 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 field was professionalized by metropolitan universities; Third World Literature emerged only through the mediating archive of Western languages — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 126 (+4 more)

Related

• Third World Literature as a field was professionalized by metropolitan universities (similarity 0.94)
• The Third World Literature category emerged from postwar metropolitan migration, not from textual accumulation (similarity 0.93)
• Third World Literature is a metropolitan fabrication, not a pre-existing category (similarity 0.92)
• Third World Literature as a category is built on Western language archives (similarity 0.91)
• Claims that homogenize ‘Third World Literature’ obscure the imperialist-determined fortunes of its producing bourgeoisie (similarity 0.89)
• Third World Literature emerged only through the mediating archive of Western languages (similarity 0.89)
• Elite immigrant critics displaced the original national Third World canon (similarity 0.89)
• Asian-origin critics, not Said, cemented immigrant-centered literary Third-Worldism (similarity 0.87)
• The ‘Third World Literature’ category presumed a primordial civilizational difference from the West. (similarity 0.86)
• World literature is a material category of metropolitan accumulation, not a universal condition (similarity 0.85)
• Metropolitan theory idealized the singularized Third World as the site of cultural opposition (similarity 0.85)
• Metropolitan literatures distort any theory of third-world writing built from them. (similarity 0.85)
• Third World literary theory effaces Marxism-rooted radical cultural heritage (similarity 0.84)
• The category ‘Third World’ has polemical but no theoretical status (similarity 0.84)
• Third-world writers have achieved real canonical standing in US academia. (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Third World Literature emerged only through the mediating archive of Western languages #corroborates (0.90) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 126
• Third World Literature as a category is built on Western language archives #corroborates (0.85)
• Elite immigrant critics displaced the original national Third World canon #expands (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 142