Summary
Marxist critic whose rejoinder to Fredric Jameson’s ‘Third-World Literature’ essay (1987) and In Theory (1992) mark, in Anna Bernard’s account, one pole of the debate over metropolitan reading of ‘third-world’ texts (Rhetorics of Belonging, PDF p.25, p.31).
Details
- Ahmad’s rejoinder, as quoted by Bernard: “Politically, we are Calibans, all. Formally, we are fated to be in the poststructuralist world of repetition with difference; the same allegory, the nationalist one, re-written, over and over again, until the end of time” (1987, 9, quoted PDF p.31).
- Bernard notes the controversy produced a backlash against Marxism in postcolonial studies, Ahmad’s own self-definition as a Marxist notwithstanding (PDF p.31, citing Lazarus, 2011a, 99).
- From Ahmad: a nation in English translation is read “as if one has no voice if one does not speak in English” (1987, 5, quoted PDF p.13), and texts from a particular setting can be dismissed as ‘predominately about other things’ (1987, 21) (PDF p.20).