Empires recruit native intellectuals to season their self-justifying narratives
Evidence
My categorization of the figure of the native informers in this book marks a particular moment in the making and breaking of the virtual empire they serve and under whose shadow humanity at large lives perilously. This empire thrives on the stories it tells itself about liberty and democracy, or about “the end of history” or “the clash of civilizations”. These stories need exotic seasonings, and the native informers provide them. They are the byproduct of an international intellectual free trade, in which intellectual carpetbaggers offer their services to the highest bidder, for the lowest risk. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 634
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the book’s central figure of the ‘native informer’ as an intellectual offering exotic seasoning to empire’s self-stories at the lowest risk.
- SEED: Article angle: the economics of the native informer as ‘intellectual free trade’ — why the highest bidder gets the lowest-risk services, and what that means for who gets platformed.
Related
- Exiled intellectuals can become native informers who manufacture consent for empire (similarity 0.80)
- US imperial machinery adopted Muslim-origin intellectuals to supply legitimizing narratives. (similarity 0.80)
- Colonial psychopathology has become paid career opportunism at the imperial center (similarity 0.79)
- Native informer intellectuals have replaced Orientalists in serving imperial capital (similarity 0.79)
- European native informers serve local anti-immigrant racism rather than US imperial aims. (similarity 0.79)
- Empire recruits native intellectuals to demolish local cultures that resist global capitalism (similarity 0.79)
- Native informers have internalized Orientalist discourse, making expert knowledge unnecessary. (similarity 0.78)