Nafisi’s text contradicts its own anti-allegory stance by politicizing every novel

Evidence

Yet it is a characteristic feature of Nafisi’s text that it lacks the courage of its stated conviction in a humanist notion of literary transcendence. Notwithstanding its insistence that “a novel is not an allegory” (111), Reading Lolita in Tehran proceeds to invest each of the classic novels it invokes with a direct political message for its besieged Iranian readers and for us. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 234

Categorization

• DEFINE: Model of a key move for the reader’s argument: how a text’s stated aesthetic theory can contradict its actual reading practice.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s distinction between novels that contest versus quietly reinforce Islamophobia — Nafisi exemplifies a text whose claims and practice diverge.