Third World Literature as a category is built on Western language archives

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)

What is disconcerting, nevertheless, is that a whole range of texts which do not ask those particular questions in any foregrounded manner would then have to be excluded from or pushed to the margins of this emerging counter-canon. Worse still, a whole range of other kinds of questionings – pertaining to other sorts of literary influences and experiential locations, the political affiliations of the author, representations of classes and genders within the text, and myriad such issues – would then have to be subordinated to the primacy of the authorized questions: about ‘nation’, and so on. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 211 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Third World Literature emerged only through the mediating archive of Western languages — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 126; Structural linguistic asymmetry makes the third-world text unknowable to metropolitan theorists — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 376; The Third World Literature canon marginalizes texts outside its authorized questions — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 211 (+8 more)

Related

• Third World Literature emerged only through the mediating archive of Western languages (similarity 0.94)
• The Third World Literature category emerged from postwar metropolitan migration, not from textual accumulation (similarity 0.94)
• Third World Literature is a metropolitan fabrication, not a pre-existing category (similarity 0.92)
• The category ‘Third World Literature’ emerged only when ex-colonial migrants demanded metropolitan middle-class inclusion (similarity 0.91)
• Claims that homogenize ‘Third World Literature’ obscure the imperialist-determined fortunes of its producing bourgeoisie (similarity 0.90)
• Third World Literature as a field was professionalized by metropolitan universities (similarity 0.90)
• Metropolitan literatures distort any theory of third-world writing built from them. (similarity 0.89)
• Metropolitan theory idealized the singularized Third World as the site of cultural opposition (similarity 0.89)
• The ‘Third World Literature’ category presumed a primordial civilizational difference from the West. (similarity 0.89)
• Local oral literatures resist absorption into any unified Third World Literature category (similarity 0.89)
• The category ‘Third World’ has polemical but no theoretical status (similarity 0.88)
• Structural linguistic asymmetry makes the third-world text unknowable to metropolitan theorists (similarity 0.88)
• Third World literary theory effaces Marxism-rooted radical cultural heritage (similarity 0.88)
• Even marginal texts suffer whenever nation-theme questions dominate Third World reading. (similarity 0.87)
• ‘Third World Literature’ functions as a counter-canon that limits admissible questions. (similarity 0.87)

Broader Connections

• Third World Literature emerged only through the mediating archive of Western languages #corroborates (0.95) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 126
• The Third World Literature canon marginalizes texts outside its authorized questions #expands (0.78) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 211
• Third World Literature as a field was professionalized by metropolitan universities #expands (0.74)
• Structural linguistic asymmetry makes the third-world text unknowable to metropolitan theorists #expands (0.72) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 376
• Western literary genres displaced traditional Islamic forms across the whole region #exemplifies (0.72)
• Metropolitan theory inflates single genres into universal forms for the Third World #expands (0.72) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 110
• The ‘Third World Literature’ category presumed a primordial civilizational difference from the West. #qualifies (0.70) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 100