Finding a voice: Allowing the aggrieved to speak across cultures in Barmak, Pinter, Kushner, Nafisi and Seierstad

Elham Hussein, Purdue University

Abstract

This thesis focuses on several fictional and non-fictional political discourses that seek to expose authoritarian oppressive practices committed---in the name of God, culture, and/or national welfare---against all individuals, especially women. Through analyzing Siddiqi Barmak's film Osama, Azar Nafisi's memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran, as well Asne Seierstad's memoir The Bookseller of Kabul, I argue that, in the age of globalization, discussing the world in terms of an absolute binarism that divides the world into a superior West and an inferior East, and that primarily blames Islam, as a religion and culture, for the presumed inferiority of the East while overlooking the complex political, economic, and social reality of the region, is not only substantially lacking but also dangerously misleading to the Western audience who is targeted by these works. Alternatively, Tony Kushner's play Homebody/Kabul defies the stereotypical representation of the East and argues that "ours is a time of connection." Similarly, in such dramas as The Hothouse, Mountain Language, One for the Road, and The New World Order, Harold Pinter proposes that all types of governments, Western or otherwise, seek to force individuals to conform; the difference lies only in the degree of subtlety. All these works, moreover, demonstrate that the human will always finds a way, no matter how subtle, to defy even the most brutal forms of aggression.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Adler, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Comparative literature|Middle Eastern literature|Icelandic & Scandinavian literature|Theater|American literature|British and Irish literature|Motion pictures

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