Excerpt from Reading Lolita in Tehran at http://www.meforum.org/542/reading-lolita-in-tehran and Anne Donadey and Huma Ahmed - Ghosh, "Why Americans Love Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 33, no. 3 (2008) 623-46. on e-reserve
Azar Nafisi, "Reading Lolita in Tehran." Middle East Quarterly Spring 2003 http://www.meforum.org/542/reading-lolita-in-tehran
FYI. Lolita is a novel by V. Nabakov. Humbert Humbert is the main character and he wishes to seduce a twelve year old girl. You can read a brief summary and review at ttp://www.amazon.com/Lolita-Everymans-Library-Vladimir-Nabokov/dp/0679410430/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240263361&sr=8-4
1. What do you find appealing and compelling in this excerpt from Reading Lolita in Tehran? What offputting?
2. How does Nafisi draw the reader in? What literary techniques does she use? What functions do references to clothing play?
3. How does Nafisi view the "personal"? "the political"?
5. How would you relate Nafisi's writing to Narayan's discussion of gender essentialism and cultural essentialism? How are images and references to the West deployed by Nafisi and by the fundamentalists?
Anne Donadey and Huma Ahmed - Ghosh, "Why Americans Love Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 33, no. 3 (2008) 623-46
Donadey and Ahmed-Ghosh "contend that this memoir has been successful for a variety of political and ideological reasons in addition to the current popularity of the memoir as a genre, Reading Lolita's literary value (manifest in the various narrative techniques used to make the past present and to maintain suspense), and its ability to elicit the reader's empathy for the characters." (623-24) They write, "In particular, Reading Lolita can easily lend itself to interpretations that reinforce a dominant western, especially U.S. ideology." (624) They fear that the memoir may reinforce for westerners the concept of the homogenous, "oppressed Muslim woman." when read in the U.S. by U.S. readers. (624) At the same time, they see Reading Lolita as subversive and challenging in the Iranian context. They employ the strategy of historical and political analysis Narayan recommended in our last reading in order to understand and situate the memoir in the different contexts of reading. The article contains the following sections:
Reading for context - 624-629
Reading for the literary and pedagogical - 629-631
Reading for the ideological 631-32
The veil: Universal symbol of women's oppression or historically dynamic? 632-35
Individual freedom as a necessary demand under theocracy and as western liberal ideology 635-36
Canonical travels and the meaning of politics 636-640
Selective historical memory 640-44
1. What would you say are the key points in their reconstruction of the Iranian context on 624-29? Are there any parallels in the west to the distinction between left secularist and religious feminists? Why is class so significant in understanding the position of women in Iran under the Pahlevi dynasty and after the revolution?
2. What are the key literary techniques that Donadey and Ahmed-Ghosh identify in Reading Lolita? What is overdetermination? (631) Do you think the popularity of the genre of memoir relates to the popularity of personal narratives in eco-feminism and the third wave in some way?
3. What are Donadey and Ahmed-Ghosh's key points about context on pages 631-32?
4. Why are the veil and styles of clothing so important symbolically in the memoir and historically? How can their symbolic meaning shift? Why?
5. Why and how do Donadey and Ahmed-Ghosh see "individual freedom as a necessary demand under theocracy and as western liberal ideology"?
6. Why was reading western canonical literature viewed as subversive in Iran and as supportive of conservative values in the west? What were the canon wars in U.S. literary criticism? What are the different connotations given to politics and the personal in the Iranian and US contexts according to Donadey and Ahmed-Ghosh? Why was Nafisi so opposed to politics and ideology?
7. What are the key points Donadey and Ahmed-Ghosh make in their final section, "Selective historical memory" on 640-44? To what other memoirs is Reading Lolita compared?
8. Donadey and Ahmed-Ghosh both praise and blame Reading Lolita. Given your reading of excerpts from the book, to what extent are their praise and blame fair? Why?
9. In the light of our study of many different types of feminist thought this semester, do any of the concepts or types of feminist thought shed light either on Reading Lolita or Donadey and Ahmed-Ghosh's article? Does the article display any of the postcolonial feminist points Narayan makes? How would you compare Reading Lolita to Gilman's Herland, Wollstonecraft's Vindication, Woolf's A Room of One's Own, or Walker's "In Search of our Mothers' Gardens" ?