CAP – ASTU

The literature work that is the focus of our ASTU class this week is the graphic narrative Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. This memoir documents Satrapi’s experiences of living through the Islamic revolution in Iran as a child and how events during the conflict affected her. What personally made Satrapi’s memoir stand out to me was how well she explained the historical context through the plot of the memoir. This not only gave me a general understanding of Iran’s history, but urged me to think of other similar events of war and corruption around the world. It also led me to question my own accountability of history and how my own perspectives of historical and current events had changed through time.

Prior to beginning her memoir, Marjane Satrapi included a brief introduction about the history of Iran – how it developed from the nomadic Aryans to the great Persian Empire and finally the formation of Iran itself. The history of Iran rang a familiar sound to me, particularly when Satrapi explained that the Islamic revolution was initiated with the support of USA. In both my high school history class and my current history class at UBC, it seems common that powerful countries such as the US often manipulates and twists the government of the country in focus for their own benefit. Similarly, the Shah of the Islamic republic came into power through a coup d’etat – the french term for a sudden upheaval of the (current) government. In supporting this coup, the US was able to gain access to the oil riches located in Iran, yet ignored the chaos that soon followed this new government.

This reminded me of several cases in Latin America where the American government would assist with a coup in order to establish a new [puppet] government, and often times the US would benefit by gaining some type of resource or trade agreement. For example, Chile and the 1973 coup of its democratically elected leader occurred because CIA covert troops assisted in the coup. But what does this mean, and why does it matter if it happened in the past?

In hindsight, my method of thinking about these important issues has developed in a way similar to Marji, the protagonist of the memoir, from naiveness to a more mature perspective. I feel like I did not care about past historical events such as Chile and Iran because I just assumed that it happened (and that was it) and which ever was the first logical version of history I heard about it, I would believe it to be true. I also assumed that “democratic” countries such as the US would never be largely at fault for anything because they were suppose to be the good guys, right? Much like Marji herself, I was quick to assume and judge both historical and current events because I could not see the same story from multiple events. As Satrapi reflects upon her child self, she remarks that “[she] realized [she] didn’t understand anything”. Likewise, I did not question why things had happened the way they did, nor did I look further into the issue. In this sense, I never really could relate to past historical events – I was just someone reading about it and then forgetting it. That is until I heard multiple perspectives of historical events, it was not just from the perspective of the victors anymore. I realized that history is constructed from the perspectives of victors, victims, allies, bystanders and attackers (and more). And it was up to me to chose for myself which history was the “right” one.

It is true history is subjective, and the fact that she had recalled her experiences as a child does not mean it is any less true than other historical accounts. That is to say, historical context may wield more insight and questions than the dry, boring material is it known to be.

Peijia Ding

Citation:

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. New York, NY: Pantheon, 2003. Print.