Coreligionist or coethnic writers’ self-loathing outrages intellectuals more than outsiders’ attacks do

Evidence

What probably angered Fanon initially and compelled him into writing Black Skin, White Masks was the publication, in 1948, of a self-loathing novella, I Am a Martinican Woman, by his fellow Martinican Mayotte Capecia; what impelled me was the publication, in 2003, of a memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Capecia’s kindred spirit Azar Nafisi. Why are we always more incensed and troubled by someone who looks and sounds like us than by any other? Is it because we identify with them, or because the world—the white world—identifies us with them? — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 138

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the native-informer tradition in Said’s Orientalism and the broader comprador-critic literature.
• SEED: A sharp piece on why betrayal reads as worse from insiders than condemnation from outsiders.