The comprador intellectual erases national history to serve empire

Evidence

In the age of “the end of history”, the function of the comprador intellectual is to oblige by wiping out all national histories and providing an entertaining story to fill the vacuum and so cover up the burglary. The content of Reading Lolita in Tehran thus matches its insidious cover; both serve its imperial context. History suspended, one searches the book in vain for even a single insight into the books and authors (Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Henry James, and Jane Austen) that hold the four chapters narratively together, or into the daily workings of the Islamic Republic. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 384

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the chapter’s key term ‘comprador intellectual’ as one who wipes out national histories to supply an entertaining story for the imperial context.
• XREF: Directly continues the terminological thread of Hamid Dabashi’s broader argument about ‘comprador intellectuals’ — an expressly Fanon-derived concept (chapter title ‘Brown Skin, White Masks’).