Nafisi’s liberal-humanist canon rhetoric masks class privilege as aesthetic universality

Evidence

Working defiantly against the historicizing schools of criticism that have emerged in literary studies in the past half-century or more, the text declares that the great novels transcend their own time and place and that their characters—and by implication we, the readers—achieve “development and maturity” by successfully negotiating life’s challenges (223). The royal “We” of liberal humanist criticism is resuscitated to inform us that the “beauty and perfection” of the Western canon as well as appropriate form enable such works to rise above the ugliness and shabbiness that sometimes constitute their subject matter, satisfying “the instinctive desire for beauty” (38, 47, 49). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 233

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘The royal We of liberal humanist criticism’ gives a name to the universalizing rhetorical move that conceals particular interests.
• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s guiding question — how a putatively contesting text quietly reinforces hierarchies. Connects to the Frankfurt School critique of culture as disguised power.