Third World Literature excluded descendants of slavery, attracting only immigrant minorities

Evidence

‘Third World Literature’, however, attracted few Black intellectuals. It was among reachers of Black Literature that the perception was immediate, even though it remained largely untheorized, that this category referred to literatures of the other minorities, the ones who were constituted not by slavery but by immigration. The commanding representatives of the African-American humanist tradition in this century - DuBois, Paul Robeson, Richard Wright, among themhad all been deeply moved by the revolutionary and anti-colonial currents on a global scale (virtually the last writing of DuBois had been a stirring homage to the Chinese Revolution; Wright was ecstatic about Bandung and the Non-Aligned Movement); but they had also known the specificity of African-American enslavement and its unique consequences, hence of the unique tie between this contemporary predicament and its African origin. This dual emphasis on the historical specificity of the African-American experience, on the one hand, and a guarded co-operation with advocates of Third World Literature, on the other, remained in place. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 341

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s central project: a coalitional ‘Third World’ identity category that dissolved under the material specificity of enslavement parallels how strategic essentialism erases material/class difference among those it groups together. — connects to: Third World Literature theory mostly excluded African-American intellectuals — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 138; Slave descendants were excluded from Egyptian and Sudanese nationalisms alike — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 783; African-American intellectuals largely rejected Third World Literature as not encompassing their slave-derived specificity — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 341

Broader Connections

• Third World Literature theory mostly excluded African-American intellectuals #expands (0.90) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 138
• Slave descendants were excluded from Egyptian and Sudanese nationalisms alike #exemplifies (0.75) — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 783