Confirmation from a Journalist : A Case Study of Azadeh Moaveni ‟ s Orientalist Discourse in Lipstick Jihad and Honeymoon in Tehran (original) (raw)
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Orientalist Framing of Post-Revolutionary Iran: A Study of Iranian-American Memoirs
Journal of World Sociopolitical Studies, 2020
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the deposition of the pro-American Pahlavi regime in Iran, an interest in the country as a mythical, complex, and conflict-ridden place has magnified among the American public. Exilic Iranian memoirs began to emerge after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and surged after September 11, 2001, claiming to provide an authentic depiction and explanation of the Iranian society and politics and the ways in which it relates to the West and Western interests. The present article aims to analyze the ways in which post-Revolutionary Iran has been framed through memoirs written by Iranian-Americans. Through a framing analysis of fifteen selected memoirs on Iran, the article identifies and presents six main frames in the analyzed texts based on Edward Said's Orientalism. The paper concludes that instead of providing a more or less objective depiction that acknowledges the diversity and heterogeneity of the Iranian society and politics, the selected texts reflect the existence of an industry of memoirists that produce content depicting Iran in an orientalist way. Such an approach further inhibits any meaningful understanding and rectification of the existing misconceptions.
Constructing an Axis of Evil: Iranian Memoirs in the “Land of the Free
The American Journal of Islamic …, 2009
A major phenomenon in recent decades within Orientalist discourse is the indigenous Orientalism that can be seen in the works of some scholars, writers, and thinkers. These writers are sometimes referred to as "captive minds," "brown sahibs," or what Malcolm X would call the "house Negro." 1 Defined by their intellectual bondage and dependence on the West and, at times, likened to pop psychologists in their writings about the "natives," their western counterparts believe them because, as native informants, they are seen to be in a position to produce authentic representations of the Oriental psyche.
2007
In my paper, I explore the cross-sections of nationalism and feminism in the autobiographical text of Iranian-American writer Firoozeh Dumas. My interest focuses on the expressions of her political experiences within the discourses of nationalism and feminism and how her discussions of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 allow her to participate in "self-Orientalizing" while subscribing to the capitalist value system through demonstrations of being a "model immigrant." By focusing on her choice of genre (the autobiography/memoir), I consider how her discussion of the Revolution and its consequences embraces liberal feminist ideals and therefore erases crucial elements of the progressive struggles in pre-and post Revolution Iran. The question then remains whether texts such as Funny in Farsi propagate misconceptions about Iranians and the Revolution and therefore function as sites of "human-made" disaster with repercussions for progressive possibilities in both the nationalist and feminist landscapes. Further, the recent explosion and popularity of Iranian-American women's memoirs points to a limited view in the United States' public sphere of a complex people and history without much regard for the progressive platform from which this dynamic and multifaceted revolution sprung nearly thirty years ago. One wonders then to what extent these texts help promote or encourage preexisting Orientalist views and attitudes towards Iran and the Middle East, especially since these writers such as Dumas stem from an upper-middle class background that embraces the values of the class-based system of the United States. Reading Funny Lipsticks through Jihad: The Politics of Feminism and Nationalism in Iranian-American Women's Memoirs Note: The following is an excerpt from a longer piece in which I look at the politics of feminism and nationalism in several Iranian-American women's memoirs including Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azadeh Moaveni's Lipstick Jihad, and of course, Firoozeh Dumas' Funny in Farsi. On the back cover of Firoozeh Dumas's Funny in Farsi, the quip from the San Francisco Chronicle reads, "Remarkable…told with wry humor shorn of sentimentality…In the end, what sticks with the reader is an exuberant immigrant embrace of America" and the San Jose Mercury News boasts, "This book brings us closer to discovering what it means to be an American." To these reviewers and the multitude of readers for whom this book is enjoyable, Iranian women are an oppressed group whose only hope for freedom and democracy rests in their access to the United States, both physically and ideologically, and Dumas celebrates this sentiment through one of the most effective universal motifs: humor. My contention is that Dumas not only perpetuates stereotypes about the allegedly oppressive conditions of Iran, but she also upholds
Re-orientalisation and the Pursuit of Ecstasy: Remembering Homeland in Prisoner of Tehran
The Western literary market is saturated with the Middle Eastern women memoirs since 9/11. What caused this saturation lies in the curiosity of the West to know about the Middle Easterners after 9/11 and the following President Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ speech addressed to Iran, North Korea and Iraq, followed by launching his ‘war on terror’ project. This was the time when an influx of memoirs by and about Iranian women has emerged. This paper examines Marina Nemat’s memories of her birthland in her memoir, Prisoner of Tehran. Utilizing Dabashi’s concept of ‘native informer’, Bhabha’s concept of ‘stereotypical representation’ and Sardar’s concept of ‘postmodernism,’ we argue that Nemat has adopted Western Orientalism in her discourse. Her stereotypical representations of Iran, Islam and Muslims, which bolster the hegemonic project of the West, lead to further orientalisation.
In this interview conducted in 2016 In Christchurch, New Zealand, the award-winning New Zealand travel writer Jill Worrall discusses her book Two Wings of a Nightingale: Persian Soul, Islamic Heart (2011), which narrates her travel to Iran. The narrative recounts the expedition in which Worrall follows the ancient caravanserais routes across Iran with her Iranian guide, Reza, and offers insightful commentary on Iranian culture, history, literature, and arts. In this discussion Worrall delineates the process of writing her book, the many ways in which her travelogue attempts to challenge and subvert dominant stereotypes about Iran, and her disillusionment with a global publishing industry that seems more interested in perpetuating dehumanising Orientalist stereotypes about certain cultures, than in offering alternative perspectives.
For almost forty years, discussions about contemporary Iran have been overshadowed by political issues and the tumultuous atmosphere of the Middle East. Media coverage of the Islamic Revolution (1979), the Iran hostage crisis (1979-1981), the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), presidential elections (1997, 2009, 2013) and the Iran nuclear deal (2015) on the one hand, and the explosive growth of social networks propagating political and human rights issues on the other, marginalized to some extent the art and popular culture produced within Iran’s geographical borders. After Hedayat and Farrokhzad, new generations of Modernists are introduced to Persian literature. Women find a new voice in cinema and popular literature. Many bestsellers are written by women, ranging from the secular novels of Pirzad and Rahimi to the ideologically charged war narratives of Hoseyni and Abad. Post-revolutionary Iran announces international painters like Farshchian and film directors who have been Oscar, Golden Globe, Cannes and Berlin festival winners, such as Farhadi, Kiarostami, Majidi, Panahi, Makhmalbaf and others. This seminar thus seeks to explore the complexities of Iranian contemporary art and culture, discuss its religious, artistic, and sociopolitical dimensions, and even trace the emergence of discourses perhaps neglected to some extent by Western academia until now. Advocating a comparative cultural approach, this seminar aims to reflect the apparent contradictions between subversive and reinforcing discourses embedded in many cultural products in a seemingly inflexible structure. The process of their cultural formation may well reflect not only what might be considered Iran’s 'central values' but also the continuously evolving and revisionist qualities of those beliefs as acted out in culture. Our seminar will address these new possibilities: the less immediately perceptible narrative versions of Iran as produced by Iranians themselves for (inter)national audiences, whether in Iran or in its diaspora, as manifested in post-Revolution literature, cinema, music, fine art, popular culture and mass media.
Revisiting Iran through Women’s Memoirs: Alternative Narratives from Insider Within
GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies
Life narratives of the Iranian women in the diaspora, which have become very popular in recent years, have long served as a model for understanding Iran for western readers. This popularity is emanated from the curiosity and interest in the west that was raised after 9/11 and the ensuing political aftermath. Written to unveil the lives of Iranian women in the Islamic Republic, these diasporic narratives have been 'growingly commodified, circulated and consumed uncritically' in the west. Much ink has been spilled on the surge of diasporic Iranian women's life narratives, the politics of their reception and circulation in the west, and their liability to furthering imperialist ideologies. We have no intention of continuing the debate over how some of these life narratives facilitate and promote imperialistic agendas. Rather, we would like to embark on an untrodden path, a fascinating journey through the growing body of life narratives by and about Iranian women from inside the Islamic Republic, equipped with accounts that vitiate the orientalist assumptions and diasporic narratives' generalisations. This paper seeks to introduce and analyse these alternative narratives. By developing a theory of the 'insider within,' this paper exhibits how alternative narratives from within can serve as a better model for understanding Iran and Iranian women.
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 2022
This paper critiques Jasmin Darznik's bestselling memoir, The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life (2011), in order to investigate the author's literary response to mainstream, (neo-)Orientalist literary representations of Iranian women in the United States. In doing so, this study sets out to examine whether the narrative reinforces dominant Western stereotypes of Iranian/Muslim women as passive, oppressed victims of social and religious patriarchy or offers a strategic discursive intervention in the American literary market to construct a space for reimagining Iranian womanhood. To this end, the author's adoption of strategic auto-Orientalism, as formulated by Martina Koegeler, as her representational modus operandi is analyzed to reveal the manner in which the narrative might promise new subjectivities and modes of writing for hyphenated female authors through exploiting the potentialities offered by the strategic appropriation of auto-Orientalism.