Ways of 'reading' and the myth of neutrality.

In this post I want to talk about some important critical frameworks that enabled me to closely ‘read’ Persepolis and Baghdad Burning. My previous post illustrated how crucial it is to not only reflect on the issues raised in the content of these texts, such as Satrapi’s discourse on ‘the veil’, but also how we, the reader,  are implicated in these texts. Through a series of complex cross- cultural discourses the reader is engaging certain representations of  ‘East’ and ‘West’ often without conscious awareness or intention. I have borrowed the above title ‘Ways of ‘Reading’ to make a specific reference to John Berger’s seminal text  ‘Ways of Seeing’ (1972).  I can’t include all of the content that I found useful here but you can view the television series adapted from his work ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnfB-pUm3eI).  In        ‘ Ways of Seeing’ Berger argues that ‘we never look just at one thing, we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves’ (quoted in Rose 2002, p. 12). What Berger is elucidating in his theory of ‘seeing’ also applies to ways of ‘reading’. Whenever a  ‘Western’ audience is engaged in reading a contemporary Middle Eastern text such as Persepolis and Baghdad Burning, it is crucial to identify how we (the reader) are complicit in particular constructions of the ‘Eastern’ other.  Gillian Whitlock elaborates on Berger’s claim by suggesting that‘ life narratives are constantly caught up in circuits of self – construction, where Islam is objectified as the obverse of Euro- American societies, driving a constant creation and re- creation of imaginary boundaries between ‘we’ and ‘others’ (2007, p. 8).  Certain critical discourses are thus called into the foreground to illuminate some of the complexities associated with autobiographical production and consumption.  Chandra Talpade Mohanty observes that ‘the existence of Third World women’s narratives in itself is not evidence of decentring hegemonic histories and subjectivities’ (2003,p.77).  She claims emphatically that ‘ it is the way that they are read, understood and located institutionally that is of paramount importance’ (Mohanty, 2003, p. 77).  What is being illuminated here is that as a reader we are never simply a passive, objective or neutral consumer of the text.  These new autobiographies thus point to the necessity of an active, engaged and critical readership of the political content being expressed to identify both subtle and overt mechanisms of institutional oppression.

One crucial term that has undoubtedly informed both the style and content of Satrapi’s and Riverbend’s work is the contextual framework that shapes their lives and can be attributed to a globalised post-modern world. Manfred Steger defines globalisation as ‘ a set of social processes that create, stretch, multiply and intensify worldwide interdependencies and exchanges while at the same time fostering in people a growing awareness of the local and the distant’ (2004, p. 13). The force of globalisation has clearly had an effect in these contemporary autobiographical narratives.  This impact is not only expressed by the authors in their textual content but also in their respective stylistic mediums .The fact that Riverbend is able to create a virtual ‘I’ utilising the world- wide web to speak back from war-torn Baghdad, indicates both the scope and the breadth of a globalised economy. This new literary form affords Riverbend the ability to reach an audience instantaneously.  She seizes this opportunity to actively exploit her autobiographical  ‘self’ through this technological hybrid form. Riverbend is aware that the setting up of this online space can potentially enable her some transformative agency through her acts of testimony. Whitlock adds that ‘these texts are enmeshed and active with conflicts utilising a globalised framework to make pertinent the fact that certain lives are at risk in the here and now’ (2007, p. 9).  Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis examines the effects of globalisation and the interconnectedness of local and global exchange in the chapter ‘Kim Wilde’.  Here  the young adolescent  Marji takes to the streets of Tehran searching for’ Western’ music while wearing a pair of Nikes, a denim jacket and a Michael Jackson badge.

 

                                                         (Image:  Satrapi, 2003 p.133)

Satrapi uses her graphic illustrations to draw attention to the shifting of cross-cultural borders in a contemporised post-modern world.  In frames such as the one above, Persepolis challenges any absolute or cohesive distinction between ‘East’ and ‘West’, instead illustrating that through the process of globalisation these dichotomies become increasingly blurred.  Satrapi intelligently deconstructs the perception of a singular monolithic nation state and suggests that neither the ‘we’ nor the ‘they’ are as self contained and homogenous as we/they once appeared.  Renato Rosaldo elaborates that ‘all of us inhabit a Twenty First Century world, which is at once marked with borrowing and lending across porous cultural boundaries and saturated with inequality , power and domination’ ( Rosaldo  1988. p, 87).

Persepolis and Baghdad Burning when read with an active and critical engagement can offer a diverse understanding of meanings that pertain to inequality, power and domination.  Certain crucial social theories, particularly postcolonial theory, draw attention to the ongoing construction of the ‘Eastern’  ‘other’.  Terms such as exoticism and orientalism illuminate the various cultural mechanisms that are associated with the  ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomous discourses. It is vital to critique the ways that texts such as Persepolis and Baghdad Burning have the potential to contribute to postcolonial concerns - in opening new spaces for exchange and dialogue - as well as simultaneously containing the potential to  re -engage the stereotypical and mythic eastern subject (Whitlock, 2007). Graham Huggans theory of ‘exoticism’ is useful here for he stresses that 'objects, places and people are not inherently ‘exotic” and “strange” but, rather, exoticism is a particular way of manufacturing otherness' (2001. p. 13) Contemporary Middle Eastern voices such as Marjane Satrapi’s and Riverbend’s have thus not only been marginalised due to their particular cultural circumstances and socio - political contexts but also through the reproduction of systems of ‘otherness’ circulating in Western discourses and rendering certain voices silent, unknowable and radically ‘other’ .  Edward Said elaborates that 'the binary opposition between the Orient (the East) and the Occident (the  West) is not only a means to a set of boundaries between self and other, but also a representation that is interlocked with the will to have power over those others' (Said 1979,  p. 71).  In my next post I will explore how these new literary forms are being embraced to facilitate and enable acts of testimony during times of social and political upheaval. I will discuss the ways that these two female authors, through their unique textual expressions, have opened necessary spaces for dialogue that speaks to the ‘everydayness’ -both the ordinary and the extraordinary - of women living in the contemporary Middle East.