Western scholars now depend on indigenous informants, re-enacting colonial knowledge production

Evidence

A particularly large mechanism in the assembly of this archive has been the institutionalized symbiosis between the Western scholar and the local informant, which is frequently re-enacted now – no doubt in far more subtle ways – between the contemporary literary theorist of the West, who typically does not know a non-Western language, and the indigenous translator or essayist, who typically knows one or two. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 124

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with Edward Said’s analysis of Orientalism and the scholar-informant relationship, and with Bernard Cohn’s work on colonial knowledge. — connects to: Western theorists depend structurally on indigenous translators who know the local languages — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 311; Indigenous scholars succeed in Western science on terms that still demean them — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 153; Metropolitan institutions staffed by Westerners generate most Third World knowledge

Related

• Western theorists depend structurally on indigenous translators who know the local languages (similarity 0.96)
• Metropolitan institutions staffed by Westerners generate most Third World knowledge (similarity 0.81)
• Suppressing either African or Western knowledge silences part of shared history. (similarity 0.80)
• Modern colonialism and genocide are structurally linked through knowledge (similarity 0.80)
• All cultures transform other cultures into knowledge fitting their own needs (similarity 0.79)
• Said’s later essays reversed his Orientalism critique into a desire for Western location (similarity 0.79)
• Western scholarship on Islam grew from positions of colonial dominance. (similarity 0.79)
• Orientalism argued Western literatures were complicit in colonialism (similarity 0.79)
• Knowledge production about the East is itself an index of Western power (similarity 0.79)
• Most Asian and African literary traditions remain unknown to American theorists (similarity 0.79)
• Orientalism ignores how colonized intelligentsias received and modified Western texts (similarity 0.78)
• Rising non-Western cultures relativized the Western episteme (similarity 0.78)
• Colonial expansion made alien cultures interpretable in the first place (similarity 0.78)