Third World nationalisms resist US culture only when joined to socialism

Evidence

Jameson’s haste in totalizing historical phenomena in terms of binary oppositions (nationalism/postmodernism, in this case) leaves little room for the fact, for instance, that the only nationalisms in the so-called Third World which have been able to resist US cultural pressure and have actually produced any alternatives are those which are already articulated to and assimilated within the much larger field of socialist political practice. Virtually all the others have had no difficulty in reconciling themselves with what Jameson calls ‘global American postmodernist culture’; in the singular and sizeable case of Iran (which Jameson forbids us to mention on the grounds that it is ‘predictable’ that we shall do so), the anticommunism of rhe Islamic nationalists has produced nor social regeneration bur clerical fascism. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 394

Categorization

• XREF: Bears on the reader’s strategic essentialism thread: Ahmad’s materialist point that nationalism only works when attached to a socialist power bloc parallels how identity appeals only work when attached to structural analysis. — connects to: Radical theory shifted from socialist revolution to Third-Worldist nationalism as national bourgeoisies consolidated — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 272; Only socialist-articulated Third World nationalisms resisted US cultural pressure; bourgeois ones embrace postmodernism. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 394
• QUESTION: Worth verifying: how do Islamic Iranian nationalists’ anti-communism and clerical fascism factor into the broader critique of discourse-first readings?

Broader Connections

• Radical theory shifted from socialist revolution to Third-Worldist nationalism as national bourgeoisies consolidated #corroborates (0.78) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 272