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| Hearsay: |
I mean, moreso than any other book? An Iranian Studies scholar in the US says, “Yes”.
Dabashi’s extreme, long-winded assault on Nafisi, who has taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington since 1997, might have caused little commotion had the Chronicle not given it so much attention. Still, it raises a host of issues.
First, beneath the rhetorical bluster and postcolonial jargon(‘‘Rarely has an Oriental servant of a white-identified, imperial design,’’ Dabashi writes of Nafisi, ‘‘managed to pack so many services to imperial hubris abroad and racist elitism at home—all in one act’’) there’s the question of whether anything in the book could be said to match the critic’s description. More broadly, there is the issue of how a discussion of women’s rights in the Muslim world ought to be framed in the West.
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October 30th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
I know a lot of dissident Iranian exiles, mostly leftists or left-leaning, who share his opinions on Nafisi. She certainly does come from a relatively conservative, relatively pro-Shah, position; and she’s attacking the regime in specific ways that make her very palatable in the West. It’s a fairly complex question, but I am glad that the Iranians criticizing Nafisis are being heard a bit, even if they are being characterized as “extreme”, “long-winded” etc.
October 30th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
The Chronicle of Higher Education (Research & Books section) also published a lengthy article about this dispute. See “A Collision of Prose and Politics” by Richard Byrne in the October 13, 2006, issue. (It’s online.)