Representing Post-Revolutionary Iran: Captivity, Neo-Orientalism, and Resistance in Iranian–American Life Writing

ISBN-13: 9780755617364 / Angielski / Twarda / 2022 / 232 str.

Hossein Nazari

Opis

Memoirs of diasporic Iranian-American authors are a unique and culturally powerful way in which Iran, its politics, and people are understood in the USA and the rest of the world. This book offers an analysis of the processes of production, promotion, and reception of the representations of post-revolutionary Iran. The book provides new perspectives on some of the most famous examples of the genre such as Betty Mahmoody’s Not Without My Daughter, Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, and Fatemeh Keshavarz’s Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran. Hossein Nazari places these texts in their social, historical, and political contexts, tracing their origins within the trope of the American captivity narrative, teasing out and critiquing neo-Orientalist tendencies within, and finally focusing on modes of discursive resistance to neo-Orientalist narratives. The book analyzes the structural means by which stereotypes about Islam and women in the Islamic Republic in these narratives are privileged by news media and the creative industries, while also charting a growing number of ‘counterhegemonic’ memoirs which challenge these narratives by representing more nuanced accounts of life in Iran after 1979.

Spis treści

Chapter 1: Introduction: Inscribing Iran in the West Historical Significance and Earliest Figurations Fabricating an “Axis of Evil” Constructing the Iranian Other Iranian Others in Others’ Literature Chapter 2: Not Without My Daughter: The Mother of Neo-Orientalist Best-sellers Resurrecting the American Captivity Narrative Tales of Caution and Mixed Marriage Menace Ghosting Ghastly Narratives West Meets East: Clash of Civilization and Un-Civilization Writing Iranians Colonially Defilement and Contamination The Cult of Iranian Domesticity Affirmation, Negation, and Bestialization Multitudinous Others Linguistic Sovereignty The Mad Muslim Man Going Native: From American Gentleman to Iranian Brute “Veiled Humanity”: The Oriental Accomplice Willing Convicts Vs. Western Rebels The Villain Writes Back Chapter 3: Damsels in Distress: Writing Muslim “Lolitas” in the West Reading Azar Nafisi in the U.S. The Front Cover Controversy Behind the Veil: The Topos Obligé of Feminist Orientalism Bridging the “Oriental Harem” to the “Free World” From Neo-Orientalism to Neo-Conservatism From the Western Canon to the West’s Cannons Curricular and Minority Questions The Western Novel Ahistorical Historicism and Learned Amnesia Chapter 4: Strains of Dissent and a Fledgling Alternative Discourse Jasmine and Stars: Cracking the Orientalist Monolith The Rebellious Bard Reinscribing Iranian Masculinity The Latter-Day Persian Scheherazade Unmasking Lolita in the West Humanizing the Persian Patriarch Reading Beyond Jasmine and Stars