Comprador intellectuals now serve power regardless of birthplace or color
Evidence
The word comprador comes from the Spanish and Portuguese comprar, “to buy”, and thus entails the specific function of facilitating the flow of capital through trade. Its original meaning, “a native servant employed by Europeans in the East”, refers to a specific period in the history of capital when it divided the world between white masters and colored natives along an East-West axis no longer valid in a world of globalized capitalism and 24-hour trading. … The defining function of the comprador intellectuals is to shore up that relation of commerce to power. Birthplace, nationality, religion, creed, and color are all irrelevant. Capital will use whatever and whoever is convenient for each particular time, place and situation. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 243
Categorization
- DEFINE: Etymology of comprador from Spanish/Portuguese ‘to buy’ and its shift from colonial ‘native servant’ to globalized intellectual category.
- XREF: Extends Edward Said’s exilic intellectual and Orientalism critique; links to Dabashi’s own revision of the comprador type.
- ADDENDUM: Connects to the reader’s interest in how knowledge workers are co-opted by power structures, paralleling the labor/capital themes in the sacrifice essay.
Related
- Globalization erases the center-periphery distinction defining comprador intellectuals (similarity 0.82)
- Empire recruits native intellectuals to demolish local cultures that resist global capitalism (similarity 0.80)
- Comprador intellectuals reaccredit discredited colonial knowledge systems (similarity 0.80)