[lbo-talk] as if -- question for Dabashi too

shag carpet bomb shag at cleandraws.com
Wed Jun 24 16:55:15 PDT 2009


At 07:27 PM 6/24/2009, Dennis Claxton quoted Dabashi: <...> In the original picture the two young students are obviously on a college campus, reading a newspaper that is reporting the latest results of a major parliamentary election in their country. Cropping the newspaper, their classmates behind them, and a perfectly visible photograph of President Khatami--the iconic representation of the reformist movement--out of the picture and suggesting that the two young women are reading "Lolita" strips them of their moral intelligence and their participation in the democratic aspirations of their homeland, ushering them into a colonial harem.


>http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/797/special.htm

hmm. I suspected as much. I haven't read Reading Lolita in Tehran -- it's on my list and a book I want our group to read. The author seemed interesting after I saw her in an interview I watched while originally reading Lipstick Jihad back in mid April (last week of the month is book reading group meeting! ha) I spent that week devouring everythign rleated to Moaveni and then the authors, videos, lectures, articles and books that circled out from there, in order to quench my thirst for more - especially as antidote to the yeah Islam is cool, religion is great, the heart of leftist movements discussions once held on this list.

I can't comment on this book, but I do find it unfortunate that, what I think is a balanced look at Iranian political life is apparently dismissed so easily. But she does have a point of view -- she's not a leftist (though her parents were; mom is a socialist now, if IIRC). I think you have to read Moaveni very carefully, to pick up on the subtlety, but she makes it perfectly clear that she initially finds the young women's obsession with lipstick, showing their hair, sex, slowdancing, etc puzzling. It feels, I think I've already quoted her as saying, as a kind of depoliticization because they go no further than that 10 ft radius.

But there are such marvelous passages explaining the backstory to the theocracy problem that the lifestyle-issue dismissers here are missing. they see it as the frippery of people concerned with superficial things, while Iranians experience it as a state imposing religious laws on them, with no room for democratic participation. God says it is so, with no power for people, no room for a civil society, no secualar space to say: yes, let's practice our religion, as our communities see fit, keep the state out of it.

I'll quote more on that later, because seriously can't say it as well as she does, in spite of having read this book three times now! (of course, it would help that i wasn't living on three hours sleep from work craziness at the moment!)

shag



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