dumbass orientalism (this week featuring iran)

Michael Slackman's article "Iranian 101: A Lesson for Americans--The Fine Art of Hiding What You Mean to Say" is about the Iranian concept of taarof, which might be described as polite dissembling--for example, insincere praise. All very well, though not a concept unique to Iran by any means. But Slackman goes on to argue that taarof creates some deeply important cultural chasm between American and Iranian methods of communication, one that must be understood (oh, those crafty Iranians!) by diplomats and commentators dealing with the Iranian regime. The tone of the whole article is essentialist (Iranians are "poets," and Americans are "pragmatists", it's like Venus and Mars all over again) and conveniently neglects to wonder whether or not political discourse in other places (say, the US?) might also rely upon verbal tactics like bluffing, coded language, polite-but-obvious lies, and so forth.

This is especially infuriating because the piece actually is trying to make an important and sensible observation--namely, that the hysteria about Ahmedinejad's speeches tends to take his reprehensible statements at face value, and disregard the fact that some of his talk might be just posturing. But Slackman doesn't just try make a reasoned case that in many cultures, politicians sometimes lie, and people sometimes make polite but insincere offers, or say things like no, your butt doesn't look big in that--no, he needs to tell us that Iranian culture is so totally different! and inscrutable! The article takes a kernel of reality about cross-cultural differences in communication, and blows it up into a bizarre facade.

Also see Bernard Lewis's hallucinatory take on why those crazy, crazy Iranians are jonesing for Armageddon--via sepoy's exasperated smackdown at Cliopatria. And from the archives, the NYT's orientalist reading list.