The link between Betty Mahmoody's "Not Without My Daughter” and Azar Nafisi's [Reading Lolita in Tehran] is the link between two phases and modes of labor migration, the moral salvation that "the West” provides, and imperial hubris. What is paramount in all of these is the denigration of local cultures as the site of actual or potential resistance to imperial domination. There cannot be any politics of resistance, aesthetics of emancipation, or prose and poetry of agential autonomy in history for people around the world-nothing except a Starbucks Coffee version of the so-called "Western classics” to go and save them. Interview with Znet. (Hamid Dabashi)

The link between Betty Mahmoody's "Not Without My Daughter” and Azar Nafisi's [Reading Lolita in Tehran] is the link between two phases and modes of labor migration, the moral salvation that "the West” provides, and imperial hubris. What is paramount in all of these is the denigration of local cultures as the site of actual or potential resistance to imperial domination. There cannot be any politics of resistance, aesthetics of emancipation, or prose and poetry of agential autonomy in history for people around the world-nothing except a Starbucks Coffee version of the so-called "Western classics” to go and save them. Interview with Znet.

Hamid Dabashi

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actual aesthetics agential autonomy betty coffee daughter denigration domination emancipation history imperial interview labor link local migration moral paramount people poetry politics potential prose reading resistance salvation save site version west western hubris lolita classics starbucks

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