Text and Prejudice

Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Azar Nafisi

I caught Azar Nafisi on Diane Rehm Show today. She was the guest to discuss her recent memoir on her mother. I found it novel when she mentioned that she had recently been naturalized as a US citizen, not because she was valueing the US reception more worthy, which was nothing given her ideology, but because her overstatement of her satisfaction for the event. It is not surprising that she became an American over Iranian given her stand so far: she is the kind the US literally welcomes for her being non-political and&nb sp;convenient dessident to pr omote US to be the almighty power while it is actually killing a lot of her fellow Muslims day by day. I would not say that she should be condemned for having no remorse regarding all these conflicts, or Islamic values, unlike the common US people would impose anybody from the region. But I never thought of her as anyone relevent as a literary scholar, and because that is what she is supposed to be evaluated for, I have been skeptical about this author. Her irressiponsible prom otion of Americanism, corny and dated individualism, employing those who were hounded from wherever the revolution was taking place, like Nabokov, as if to generalize everything was universal and same to the eyes of the elites. After all, I guess her motif of the use of Nabokov's texts and the source of her inspiration was uniformly c oming from her desperate desire to justify her being social elite, and to defend her own previledge. I found her book Reading Lolita... weird for its dismissal of class struggle among the women she represented. I was very curious to know how any different angle, such as Edward Said's, would have been read by a female intellectual from the Islamic culture, which could have x-rayed the situation she was in. But she only obscured it by promoting Americanism. I still wonder how she conceived the theory and the impact that it caused the literary criticism. There was no way she did not know Post-Colonial angle, or the predicament of Third World Femminism. How about Spivak's? Let's say Nafisi is just another previledged exile who has had easier life than the average citizens of the country, so no mystery if no caring for others' struggle was observed. If there was anything in common between Nobokov and herself was an exile protecting one's previledge and an occasional role of the dessident in the safe and comfortable range, to secure his/her status in the new found land of USA. In this sense, Nafisi can't be any handier poster woman for US foreign policy.

I was never a Nobokov fan and really don't understand why people still try to find something admirable in his works. He would have been the exact one who imposed his cock on someone like Nafisi, if only younger, just for her being a woman and was from the powerless, therefore inferior, background to his, and would have hushed her if she claimed his imposition. In that sense, Ayn Rand seemed to hold the same status in the US literary history as hers. Talentless but being a creator of the easy textbook formula of the famous cult Objectivism, which seems, in a way, pretty close to what Nafasi sounds like. There is a bunch of followers who only read the fountain head in ten years.

The nature of DRShow is talk-in, so the show shifted into it from the interview and her reading. The first caller turned out to be a calm but eloquent critic who showed disapproval to Nafish's loud but only self important stand; the call er was saying that Nafisi's being too thoughtless to take the stand of Americanism because it inivitably enhanced stigma and trauma Iran is still going through mostly due to the relationship to the US. Consequently Nafasi has been promoting anti-Muslim persepective, therefore she is irresponsible. This opinion astutely voiced my regard for Nafasi's work and political stand as well. To respond, and because I bet that this was the most anticipated inquiry and reproach to her, Nafasi repeated her rehersed answer just hysterically ot the opinion. It was the same theory of individualism, or Objectivism, which would only to secure her newly found status in the US. I guess the textbook of literary theory she had might be a bit too dated. She could not care less, though, for she only wants to save her own ass.

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