Third World Literature as a field was professionalized by metropolitan universities

Evidence

The issue of assembling and professionalizing a new area of literature, namely ‘Third World Literature’, has arisen primarily in the metropolitan university, in England and North America for the most part, which is responding to quite specific kinds of pressures by appropriating particular kinds of texts, and by devising a new set of categories within the larger conceptual category of Literature as such. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 185

Categorization

• QUESTION: Follows the reader’s interest: if ‘Third World Literature’ was institutionally manufactured in the metropole, does that similarly expose strategic essentialism’s enabling apparatus — who gets to hold identity ‘strategically’ depends on institutional location?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 185
• XREF: connects to: Third World Literature is a metropolitan fabrication, not a pre-existing category — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 192; Metropolitan institutions assemble and control most knowledge produced about the Third World; Third World Literature as a category is built on Western language archives (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• The category ‘Third World Literature’ emerged only when ex-colonial migrants demanded metropolitan middle-class inclusion #expands (0.85)
• Non-Western literature reaches readers mediated by metropolitan selection #expands (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 74
• Elite immigrant critics displaced the original national Third World canon #expands (0.78) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 142
• Metropolitan theory inflates single genres into universal forms for the Third World #complicates (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 110
• Third World literary theory’s rise marked retreat from activist anti-imperialism #expands (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 145
• Third World Literature emerged only through the mediating archive of Western languages #expands (0.72) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 126
• Postmodernist critical fashion increasingly frames how Third World texts get canonized #expands (0.72) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 212