01 The Dissimilitude Paradox in Literary Studies: Islamophobia in Satrapi’s Persepolis, Heterogeneity in Neshat’s Women Without Men, and Finding a Way Forward in the New White Supremacist Era in the US
Keywords:
Diversity, Multiculturalism, human rights, social cultural psychology representations of Islam, Iranians, contemporary Iranian constructs of genderAbstract
This essay uses Shirin Neshat’s film, Women Without Men originally entitled Zanan-e bedun-e mardan, is based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel and Marjane Satrapi’s adaptation of her Persepolis books to film, as case studies to explain why feminist and multicultural curricular reforms in US universities during the 1990s, which emphasize valuing diversity for its own sake, failed to prevent the rise of Islamophobia, sexism, and racism in the post 911 era. As a result of failure, activists and scholars need to reconsider how to foster civil/human rights as well as basic respect for diverse beliefs and peoples. Socio-cultural psychology offers two alternatives to “diversity multiculturalism,” which are the arguments of similitude and self-interest. While neither are perfect or even perhaps palatable solutions to conspicuous white supremacy in US government offices and policies since the presidential election of 2016, they should be included in discussions about remedies that can reverse trending bigotry.
