Subject
Re: Reading Lolita in Tehran in a new light
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Two statements in Hamid Dabashi's analysis of Nafisi's Lolita/Tehran stand
out as bald representations of the reality behind the Taliban and El Qaeda
subversion of Islamic spiritual truth. The first, as Dabashi knows, is too
obvious to be disguised:
"Reading Lolita in Tehran is predicated on an element of truth. The Islamic
Republic of Iran has an atrocious record of stifling, silencing, and
outright murdering secular intellectuals, while systematically and legally
creating a state of gender apartheid."
The other is too paranoid to be accepted by any but the most obtuse of
dupes.
"By far the most immediate and intriguing aspect of Reading Lolita in Tehran
is its cover, which shows two female teenagers bending their heads forward
in an obvious gesture of reading something."
The idea that Nafisi's publishers selected an art director to produce a
cover design that would telegraph a message of decadent Western anti-Islamic
content, interpretable via the mystifications of the followers of the
magnificent Barthe, is farcical.
If Nafisi has written such a fishy, profoundly superficial book, whose
insidious essence can be apprehended simply by looking at the cover, what is
the fuss about? How many minds has it really twisted into an anti-Islamic
stance that have not been already twisted in that direction by the actions
of Osama Bin Laden and the steaming hordes that fling themselves into riots
when they disapprove of a cartoon?
How many anti-Nafisi riots have rocked Europe, America, and the Middle East?
Or are the Imams and the Mullahs behind the in getting the news from Dabashi
and sharp thinkers like Piers Smith, late of etc.?
Andrew Brown
_____________________________________________
"The book, which is otherwise profoundly superficial"
What does this mean?
Anthony Stadlen
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
out as bald representations of the reality behind the Taliban and El Qaeda
subversion of Islamic spiritual truth. The first, as Dabashi knows, is too
obvious to be disguised:
"Reading Lolita in Tehran is predicated on an element of truth. The Islamic
Republic of Iran has an atrocious record of stifling, silencing, and
outright murdering secular intellectuals, while systematically and legally
creating a state of gender apartheid."
The other is too paranoid to be accepted by any but the most obtuse of
dupes.
"By far the most immediate and intriguing aspect of Reading Lolita in Tehran
is its cover, which shows two female teenagers bending their heads forward
in an obvious gesture of reading something."
The idea that Nafisi's publishers selected an art director to produce a
cover design that would telegraph a message of decadent Western anti-Islamic
content, interpretable via the mystifications of the followers of the
magnificent Barthe, is farcical.
If Nafisi has written such a fishy, profoundly superficial book, whose
insidious essence can be apprehended simply by looking at the cover, what is
the fuss about? How many minds has it really twisted into an anti-Islamic
stance that have not been already twisted in that direction by the actions
of Osama Bin Laden and the steaming hordes that fling themselves into riots
when they disapprove of a cartoon?
How many anti-Nafisi riots have rocked Europe, America, and the Middle East?
Or are the Imams and the Mullahs behind the in getting the news from Dabashi
and sharp thinkers like Piers Smith, late of etc.?
Andrew Brown
_____________________________________________
"The book, which is otherwise profoundly superficial"
What does this mean?
Anthony Stadlen
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm