Comprador intellectuals reaccredit discredited colonial knowledge systems
Evidence
After Edward Said dismantled the whole edifice of Orientalism, Nafisi is recruited to reaccredit it. The ridiculous disparity between these two citations—Edward Said and Azar Nafisi—does not matter, because its absurdity has already been facilitated by the banality of the parity proposed between “people like Said” and “people like Lewis”. For people like Lewis, one Oriental is as good—or as disposable—as another. But in anticipation of his endorsement, Nafisi makes sure that one of the demonic characters she portrays in her book as an “Islamist student” is an avid supporter of Said—thus identifying the most celebrated public intellectual of his generation, the most eloquent voice speaking against the terror of this empire, with the most retrograde sentiments in a theocracy. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 411
Categorization
- DEFINE: Concretizes the comprador intellectual figure: a local elite who accredits empire’s intellectual authority in exchange for recognition.
- APHORISMS: The deeper lesson: empires recruit credentialed insiders from the colonized to legitimize what their own thinkers can no longer defend.
Related
- Comprador intellectuals now serve power regardless of birthplace or color (similarity 0.80)
- Empire recruits native intellectuals to demolish local cultures that resist global capitalism (similarity 0.79)
- Said’s Orientalism overshadowed the sociology-of-knowledge tradition it drew on (similarity 0.78)