Theory’s ideological shifts track the real fortunes of decolonized states

Evidence

That poststructuralism, arising initially in fields as diverse as anthropology and philosophy, has given literary theory its present terms of thought, is obvious enough. But these changing fortunes of the nationalist ideology in the trajectories of literary theory are determined also – more decisively though less self-consciously on part of the theorists themselves – by the actual fortunes of the national-bourgeois state in the decolonized countries. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 67

Categorization

• QUESTION: Ahmad’s claim that the theorists’ own positions are ‘more decisively’ determined by postcolonial state fortunes than they acknowledge invites testing against a specific poststructuralist critic.
• XREF: connects to: French structuralism’s rise followed decolonization defeats and masked rightward political drift — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 249

Related

• Poststructuralism’s rise in colonial literary theory conceals rather than explains its material-economic context (similarity 0.87)
• Postcolonial theory recasts decolonization as a literary-critical rather than political contest (similarity 0.87)
• Postcolonial theory’s turn to representation displaced study of imperialist political economy (similarity 0.85)
• Postcolonial literary theory’s rapid shift from nationalism to poststructuralism concealed material world dynamics (similarity 0.85)
• Postcolonial theory lacks a systematic periodization of its own practices. (similarity 0.85)
• Poststructural literary theory’s nationalism critique tracked the national-bourgeois state’s rise and fall (similarity 0.84)
• Postcolonial status denotes structural state shifts, not mere birth after decolonization (similarity 0.84)
• Postcolonial literary theory obscures the political and economic materialities determining it (similarity 0.83)
• French colonial defeats and occupation, not Asian decolonization, radicalized Western literary theory (similarity 0.83)
• Postcolonial Anglo-American academy discourse erased a structural split between revolutionary and national-bourgeois decolonization. (similarity 0.82)
• French structuralism’s rise followed decolonization defeats and masked rightward political drift (similarity 0.82)
• Poststructuralist Third World theory arose as a substitute for failed nationalist ideology (similarity 0.82)
• Postcolonial national bourgeoisies consolidated while nationalism evaporated or caused havoc (similarity 0.81)
• Post-colonial states grew more differentiated and competitive, not more unified (similarity 0.80)
• Postcolonial subdisciplines emerged by distancing themselves from anti-imperialist activist politics and economics (similarity 0.80)