The postcolonial describes a world condition rather than a theory or identity

Evidence

However, some of these criticisms, such as that offered by Anouar Majid, begin from the false premise that postcolonialism is merely the theoretical wing of identity politics and that “the postcolonial” is the inevitably compromised brainchild of those “comprador intellectuals” first picked out by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Arif Dirlik. In fact, “the postcolonial” is a description of our contemporary world condition, not a set of theories or an identity. It sums up life for many who wrestle with the legacy of historical colonialism and find their place in the world still acted on by controlling impulses of the powerful nations of the West. It also encompasses the willed amnesia with which these privileged First World nations continue to blame contemporary problems on recidivism or “fundamentalism,” read as inherent in subject peoples and nations, just as it was in the days of empire. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 52

Categorization

• DEFINE: Morey’s sharpest definitional move: rescuing ‘the postcolonial’ from reduction to identity-politics theory. He ties it to a material world condition, including First World ‘willed amnesia’ blaming fundamentalism on subject peoples — a causal link to Islamophobia’s storage.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s tools on The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Home Boy — this account of Muslim citizens relegated to ‘disposable infrahuman status in a global economy of rights’ is exactly what Changez experiences being reduced to, and what Bedaiwi’s protagonist faces. — connects to: Decoloniality rejects postcolonialism for complicity in Western universalist thinking — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 267; Modernist exile is better explained by modernist self-image than by postcolonial conditions — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 523; the MOC “The Forge and the Other: How Power, Discourse, and Encounter Cast the Self” (+1 more)
• SEED: The ‘willed amnesia’ line — blaming contemporary problems on recidivism/fundamentalism as in empire days — is a transferable concept for arguing that Hamid and Naqvi dramatize, not merely describe, this amnesia being projected onto their characters.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 52