World literature is a category impossible for imperialized nations like India

Evidence

No such accumulation obtains in the imperialized formations such as India, and ‘world literature’ in that situation exists only as an abstraction or, at best, a universalist aspiration. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 27

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to debates on ‘Third World Literature’ and the world-literature canon (compare Moretti, Damrosch) and to theories of literary infrastructure tied to material accumulation. — connects to: World literature is a material category of metropolitan accumulation, not a universal condition — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 78
• DEFINE: Clarifies world literature as a function of metropolitan accumulation of cultural artefacts, empty for imperialized formations.

Related

• World literature is a material category of metropolitan accumulation, not a universal condition (similarity 0.91)
• Third World Literature is a metropolitan fabrication, not a pre-existing category (similarity 0.86)
• A national literature exceeds the sum of its regional literatures (similarity 0.84)
• The Third World Literature category emerged from postwar metropolitan migration, not from textual accumulation (similarity 0.84)
• Third World Literature emerged only through the mediating archive of Western languages (similarity 0.84)
• Literature and culture are not coterminous with language and state boundaries (similarity 0.83)
• Metropolitan literatures distort any theory of third-world writing built from them. (similarity 0.83)
• Claims that homogenize ‘Third World Literature’ obscure the imperialist-determined fortunes of its producing bourgeoisie (similarity 0.83)
• Indian literature’s unity is an effect of geography and the nation-state (similarity 0.82)
• Non-Western literature reaches readers mediated by metropolitan selection (similarity 0.82)
• The category ‘Third World Literature’ emerged only when ex-colonial migrants demanded metropolitan middle-class inclusion (similarity 0.81)
• Third World Literature as a category is built on Western language archives (similarity 0.81)
• India’s only unified literary intelligentsia works in English, not Indian languages (similarity 0.81)
• Enumerative national literature categories derive their unity from geography, not composition (similarity 0.81)
• Pre-modern Indian literary culture was polyglot, not unilingual (similarity 0.81)