Reading Hannah in Tehran: Arendt reprinted in Farsi
Posted on Wednesday 15 September, 2010
Filed Under International
AZAR NAFISI’S ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’ tells the story of an Iranian university lecturer who loses her job after refusing to wear the veil, and instead forms a clandestine book club to allow female students to study decadent western literature.
Controversial ever since its publication seven years ago, it has since been translated into 32 languages. But its bestseller status, in some people’s minds, has nothing to do with the merits or demerits of the work. Ms Nafisi told the New York Times: ‘People from my country have said the book was successful because of a Zionist conspiracy and US imperialism.’
Others, such as Columbia University professor Hamid Dabashi, contend that Nafisi is a ‘native informer and colonial agent’, who makes it her business to provide ideological cover for a US attack on Iran.
Interviewed by the leftwing US publication Z Magazine, Dabashi shamefully compared the author to Lynndie England, the US soldier convicted of abusing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib.
Ms Nafisi’s actions and activities appear to me entirely to be applauded. While a disinclination to kow-tow to theocractic dress strictures and an insistence that women be allowed access to Nabokov, Fitzgerald and Austen may prove disagreeable to Press TV, no leftist should find such notions objectionable.
My guess would be that ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’ is not officially available in the city namechecked in the title, although hopefully it circulates widely in Farzi samizdat.
Meanwhile, I happened to stumble on a website of an outfit called called Iran Book News Agency, a non-governmental organisation that functions with official sanction.
IBNA reports that a selection of extracts from Hannah Arendt’s ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ has been reprinted in Iran, for the second time in a year.
While I would not agree with all of its arguments, which are inevitably marred by their cold war context, Ms Arendt’s 1958 volume has always struck me as a splendid polemic against states which attempt to build legitimacy by reference to an all-embracing ideology, frequently premised on anti-semitism.
As IBNA itself notes:
It could be briefly said that totalitarian regimes want to have total surveillance over all social and economical affairs and monopoly of political power through subversion of all oppositions.
Yes indeed, that much could briefly be said of many countries that, for instance, outlaw leftist parties and trade unions. But Ms Arendt’s observations pertain entirely to Stalinism and Nazism, you understand.
Therefore the two recent Farsi editions are surely of historical interest only in a country that boasts ‘a mature system of democracy’, as my Labour Party comrade Andy Newman so strongly insists.
That leaves me for one entirely mystified as to why Ms Arendt’s thinking should have obtained such popularity among young Iranians right now. Can any readers hazard a guess as to why this might be?
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14 Responses to “Reading Hannah in Tehran: Arendt reprinted in Farsi”
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We can’t deny that an ideological war is going on with the specific intention of preparing public opinion for an invasion of Iran. Doesn’t mean they will carry out any attack but the ideological war does exist. The same thing happened with Saddam and Iraq, lest we forget!! I know it was all of a few years ago so people may have forgotten!!
No doubt also that if Israel had its way Iran would already be a wasteland.
Don’t know enough about the author to comment on the accusations against her but from what you have said she sounds like a very brave woman deserving our support but with an anti imperialist message attached. Those are the times I am afraid.
Interesting that the Roma expelling French have put into law the banning of the veil. Totalitarianism is spreading.
Dear oh dear….
Dean. You sound like west of Scotland man. Getting rid of the veil is getting rid of totalitarianism. Sending the Roma criminals back from wherever they came is sensible crime fighting. Well done the Frogs. Fuck the EU.
Deary, deary me, James Glasgow. For you the state saying what clothes can be worn and expelling people solely because of their ethnicity are positive moves. You don’t really believe it, do you? It’s just a wind-up.
Lobby. Ma Maw wore a turban and a pinnie at the wash hoose. That was practical. A scarf oan ra heid for religion naw. That is fiction. Why are the Roma in France? Who got rid of them in the first instance. Who are the racists? Do you like to see children oan their knees with cups begging then the smart arse criminals emptying them into bags. I never wind up anyone! Well OK socialists are fair game as always. The Frogs are entitled to self determination as Lenin would say.
Dean,
An often neglected aspect of Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism (perhaps due to the Cold War context, though not in the way Dave mentioned it) is its long and detailed discussion of imperialism. Maybe a third of a book (Earlier drafts were titled ‘Race-Imperialism’) explains how imperial expansion was one of the elements in modern european history that led to fascism and totalitarianism. In doing so, it draws heavily on Hobson, Luxemburg and Lenin to explain imperial expansion in terms of the bourgeoisie’s limitless need for capital outlets.
Which, if we were going to be optimistic, might condition the reading of the text by young Iranians, and suggest to them some of the reasons why the west takes such an interest in their domestic affairs.
We could be even more optimistic – the second edition of ‘Origins’ contains a long epilogue reflecting on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, effectively a paean to workers and soldiers soviets/councils. It has some interesting things to say about revolutionary institutions in contexts more authoritarian than those the left are used to in western europe. Perhaps some inspiration for a grassroots left that needs to alter economic and political structures of authority rather than just overthrowing an authoritarian leadership. (The same would apply anywhere else as much as Iran).
Dean, why don’t you just stick to writing the Dave Spart column in Private Eye.
Lobby, be precise, it’s the Burka not the veil.
The ultra-secularist ligue des droits de l’homme (founded during the Dryfus Affair) has been at the forefront of the protests against the expulusion of Roma.
Dreyfus – not dryfus…
OK so what evidence do we have for Arendt’s popularity amongst ‘young Iranians’?
So a Farsi translation of Origins of Totalitarianism has been reprinted twice in a year.
But how big were those print runs? 100, 1,000, 10,000 copies – remember you can now print much smaller runs of a book than used to be economically viable.
And if as I suspect Iran has little interest in enforcing international copyrights or forcing publishers to pay royalties, a small print run of Arendt might be very cheap indeed.
How do we know that it is being read by young people?
My quick back of a fag packet calculation is that there must be over 30 million Iranians aged 16-30 – even if this book is piled high in the Iranian equivalent of Waterstones I doubt very much that even 0.1% of that demographic can have read it,
How do we know that the translation is a faithful one and that it doesn’t for instance have an introduction by some regime propagandist and only include those passages that are ‘anti-imperialist’?.
And if we discovered that say the Communist Manifesto has been reprinted twice in Bangladesh this year would that justify us in claiming that Marxism is undergoing an intellectual renaissance in the Ganges Delta?
This post really does seem to be built on very shaky foundations…
Blimey we now how a human spell-checker here!
Perhaps one angle of interest is the other major theme of ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’. Nafisi fell out of love with the left because the majority of it justified the Theocracy on the grounds that it was ‘anti-imperialist’. She talks of one type pouring scorn on human rights as a bourgeois diversion.
Since the regime ended up by murdering thousands of leftists – not to mention its repression of human rights in general and any oppositon in particular – this shows the logic of ‘anti-imperialism’ genre Dean.
Off -topic but very important:
http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/death-of-lutte-ouvriere-founder-hidden-for-a-year/
The hundreds of thousands killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and the occupied terroritories is the logic of Coates pro imperialism. And the thousands slaughtered in any attack on Iran will mean more blood on his hands.
“Nafisi fell out of love with the left because the majority of it justified the Theocracy”
The majority justify it do they. Or are you just making this shit up? Does Nifisi still fight for workers in Iran? If so she hasn’t fallen out with the left has she. If she doesn’t fight for workers anymore then she was never on the left anyway!
@Dean
“she sounds like a very brave woman deserving our support but with an anti imperialist message attached”
I suppose you would have said the same to all the victims of the Gulag. I suspect that the “anti imperialist message” actually means we are not prepared to give you any material support whatsover. If not could you please let us know what form your support will actually take?? Rather than telling us what it isn’t.
“I suppose you would have said the same to all the victims of the Gulag”
I would take each case on its merits.
The form that would take would be to hold demos, raise the issue in public arenas. Link up with worker organisations in Iran, people this apparent former leftist has fallen out with, which always make me suspicious. Like those who cite the USSR as a reason for dropping socialism, which makes me ask so you think capitalism was great all along and the workers can like it and lump it. Fickle fuckers.
It wouldn’t in anyway take the form of sounding the drums of war on behalf of our ruling class, which I am guessing you would be all for.
@Dean
As a current leftist I support all victims of oppression wherever it occurs regardless of what I see as their merits.
I never cited the USSR as a reason for dropping socialism – why do you think ity should be. I am more than prepared to criticise capitalism as well.
So how would you link up with worker organisations in Iran? How would such a move have any effect? Did you try and link up with worker organisations in Iraq? If so, which ones and why wasn’t your approach sucessful?