It was so far from a colonial relationship.

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In this paper, I draw on historical accounts of brokers in the colonial era to analyse the position and roles of contemporary cultural-political brokers operating in the context of war and migration: first, interpreters who supported Western armies in neo-colonial wars, and second, racialised frontline staff of ‘mainstream’ migrant and refugee NGOs in postcolonial metropoles.

The few links drawn between brokers in imperial wars, colonial administrations and contemporary brokers remain largely reserved to the spectacular, such as the abandonment of local allies during the fall of Kabul and Saigon. However, as Ann Laura Stoler astutely notes: “What animates effective rather than idle colonial history is […] how deeply it disrupts the stories we seek to tell, [...] how much it refuses to yield to the pathos of moral outrage or to new heroes, subaltern or otherwise” (2011, p. 144). In this paper, I will suggest that attention to resonances between historical and contemporary brokers brings into sharper relief the structural dynamics shaping seemingly innocuous interactions with brokers in spaces of conflict and migration. Analytically and normatively, in identifying continuities in the role and experiences of these contemporary brokers with those of their colonial predecessors, I seek to counter postcolonial “jamais vu” (the opposite of ‘déjà-vu’), a misremembering based on the wrongful belief that one has never seen something, which in fact one has experienced before.

A zoom link will be made available for distance learning PhD students on request. Please contact Dr Purba Hossain or Stephanie Mawson if you have any questions. 

Prof. Sara de Jong (University of York)