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

[shag carpet bomb]

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