October 31, 2006
nafisi: stooge?
IF THE UNITED STATES takes military action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, planning for which has been much speculated about but denied by the Bush administration, who will deserve the blame? The Iranian regime, for its brazen defiance of the international ban on nuclear proliferation? America’s neoconservatives, itching to remake the Middle East? Or Azar Nafisi, the Iranian expatriate author of the 2003 women’s book-club fave ‘‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’’?Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, would blame all three, but it’s his vituperative attack on Nafisi that earned him a spot this month on the cover of the Chronicle of Higher Education.
more from Boston Globe Ideas here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 12:53 PM | Permalink
Comments
I heartly agree with Professor Dabashi, reading "Reading Lolita in Theran" a year ago made me feel disappointed to the effect how the Ms. Nafisi made it bluntly devoid of a certain reality on issues she seemed to touch. However, as I did then when I reviewed the book a year ago so do I see now. The book describes memories of one person and does not strain from these seemingly vivid images the authors memories in her book - so sadly though these images impregnate readers who are not able to connect further on the issues of the history of women in islam or iran for that matter. As such I see the same concern the Professor Dabashi, since it feeds on certain illusions, but then of course we might have to ask what does not regarding the issue? Noting that only the current known contemporary iranian artists hosted in the United States seem to drive in the same extent on the same issues, though their work hauntingly beautiful and righteously concerning, they can be looked as much of a diatribe to the current regime and translated as one sided and benefiting the one they are hosted in.
Posted by: Nico | Oct 31, 2006 4:01:27 PM
Post a comment