Bloomsbury Orientalism Versus Occidentalism: Literary and Cultural Imaging Between France and Iran Since the Islamic Revolution (International Library of Cultural Studies): 24

At a time when Iran is represented in the French media as a rogue state obsessed with its nuclear programme, and when France is portrayed in the Iranian media as a decadent and imperialist country, this book highlights the role of cultural representations and perceptions. Here, Laetitia Nanquette examines the functions, processes and mechanisms of stereotyping and imagining the other that have pervaded the literary traditions of France and Iran when writing about each other. She furthermore analyses Franco-Iranian relations, exploring the literary traditions of this relationship, the ways in which these have affected individual authors and reflect socio-political realities. With themes that feed into popular debates about the nature of Orientalism and Occidentalism, and how the two interact, this book will be vital for researchers of Middle Eastern literature and its relationship with writings from the West, as well as those working on the cultures of the Middle East. Review Laetitia Nanquette has taken a neglected topic, the mutual representation of France and Iran in French and Persian narrative prose literature of the last thirty years and subjected it to a forensic analysis of great skill and subtlety. Guiding the reader gently through the different categories into which she has divided the eighty or more texts that relate to the theme of stereotyping and Othering, she moves from a discussion of the essentialised illusions of the Other and finally, through carefully defined stages, to the hybridity and the acceptance of alterity found in some recent fiction. It is rare to find a scholar so well read in imagology, post-colonial and post-modernist literary theory, who can express difficult concepts clearly and logically, whilst showing at the same time a sophisticated sense of the nuances of Persian prose. Laetitia Nanquette has produced a work of unusual maturity and insight. John Gurney, Emeritus Fellow, Wadham College, University of Oxford Laetitia Nanquette s comparative study of imaging between the French and the Iranians since 1979 is both topical and refreshing. It is topical because it sheds light from a literary angle on Iran s complex love-hate relationship with its most significant non-Anglo western interlocutor. Nanquette s work is refreshing in that it avoids seeing occidentalism as a perfect mirror of orientalism, thereby opening a space in which mutual cultural Othering can be contested. Nanquette s exploration of the varied and often fraught modes of writing adopted in the Iranian diaspora adds to our understanding of the challenges faced by exiled Iranian writers, and their quest for self-expression. --Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Persian Literature, Stanford University and co-editor of Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran: Iconic Woman and Feminine Pioneer of New Persian Poetry (I.B.Tauris, 2010) About the Author Laetitia Nanquette is Vice- Chancellor Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. In 2011-12 she was Fulbright Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar at Harvard University. She also holds a PhD in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, for which she received the 2011 Honourable Mention of the Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize from the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies.