Renaming ‘informant’ as ‘informer’ shifts attention to moral betrayal

Evidence

In honor of John Ford’s 1935 masterpiece The Informer—with its archetypal squealer, Gypo Nolan (Victor McLaglen), betraying the Irish Republican Army militant Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford)—I have modified informant to informer. Where informant credits comprador intellectuals with the knowledge they claim to possess but in fact do not, informer suggests the moral degeneration specific to the act of betrayal. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 86

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the book’s central neologism: native informer, distinguished from anthropological ‘informant.’