World literature is a material category of metropolitan accumulation, not a universal condition

Evidence

Metropolitan countries accumulate cultural artefacts from the whole world; something called ‘world literature’ may arise out of these processes of accumulation, and the category may even have relevance in a context where these countries also import, in the same sweep, proletarian as well as professional strata from all parts of the globe, who in rurn press the metropolitan university to expand its curricula. 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, 78

Categorization

• DEFINE: Reframes ‘world literature’ from a universalist category into one grounded in specific metropolitan accumulation dynamics.
• XREF: Connects to Ahmad’s broader materialist claim that discourse-first categories obscure material/class structure in postcolonial theory. — connects to: Third World Literature is a metropolitan fabrication, not a pre-existing category — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 192; World literature trades unequally between a dominant center and periphery; World literature is a category impossible for imperialized nations like India — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 27 (+4 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: A particularly dense materialist inversion of a taken-for-granted literary category — the abstraction-concreteness move refuses the fashionable universalism.

Broader Connections

• Third World Literature is a metropolitan fabrication, not a pre-existing category #corroborates (0.92) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 192
• World literature trades unequally between a dominant center and periphery #expands (0.88)
• Metropolitan literatures distort any theory of third-world writing built from them. #corroborates (0.85)
• Third-world literature reaches metropolitan readers through metropolitan-controlled grids #expands (0.82) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 190
• World literature is a category impossible for imperialized nations like India #corroborates (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 27
• Non-Western literature reaches readers mediated by metropolitan selection #expands (0.78) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 74