Black Bodies White Culture: A Black Feminist [Re]Construction of Race and Gender in Morrison's Paradise
'This article intends to explore and expose through the analysis of Morrison's Paradise how the Afro American female writers [re]construct the potential of Afro American ecriture feminine to seek the true freedom and empowerment of black women by appealing them to 'write-through bodies'. To achieve this purpose, this article articulates its theoretical agenda, through the exploration of the work of the outstanding, widely acknowledged award-winning, English speaking Afro American female writer: Toni Morrison. Though it aims to highlight the significance and contribution of the Afro American female novelists towards broadening the frontiers of 'ecriture feminine', it does not aim to offer the generalized history of women writing in Afro American literature. It seeks to propose alternative ways of informed analysis, grounded in discourse and Feminist theories, to evaluate Toni Morrison's contribution to 'ecriture feminine'.
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Race, Gender, Culture, Black Feminism, Morrison.
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(1) Mumtaz Ahmad
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Government Guru Nanak Postgraduate College, Nankana Sahib, Punjab, Pakistan.
(2) Fatima Saleem
Lecturer, Debarment of English, National University of Modern Languages, Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan.
(3) Ali Usman Saleem
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Government College University Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan.
Poetic Negotiations: Salad Bowl Feminism in Selected Poetry of Fehmida Riaz, Pat Mora and Joan Loveridge-Sanbonmatsu
The research attempts to evaluate the depiction of women's oppression in specific postcolonial contexts at the hands of the interlocked power pattern formed by manifold factors like patriarchy, class conflict, religion, ethnicity and imperialism in the selected poetry of the renowned Pakistani poetess Fehmida Riaz, the Latino American Poetess Pat Mora, and the Japanese poetess Sanbonmatsu. It applies the theory of Postcolonial Feminism to bring to the fore the oppression of postcolonial women at the intersection of gender, class, race, religion and culture, hence, offering a critique of Western Feminist discourse and its slogan of sisterhood, which tends to erase heterogeneity in women's situations across the globe. The theory of Third World Feminism as well as the portrayals in these poetic compositions from a variety of postcolonial social formations, highlight the fact that postcolonial women are not a monolithic and archetypal suffering category as presented in Western discourses; instead, their resistant agency and subversive subjectivity also stands at the center of their creative writings.
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Postcolonial Feminism, Hegemonic Feminist Discourse, Intersectionality, Patriarchy, Race, Class, Nationality
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(1) Kalsoom Khan
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Government Guru Nanak Postgraduate College, Nankana Sahib, Punjab, Pakistan.
(2) Mumtaz Ahmad
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Government Guru Nanak Postgraduate College, Nankana Sahib, Punjab, Pakistan.
(3) Malik Mujeeb ur Rahman
Lecturer, Department of English, Minhaj University, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan.
The Awakening's Rediscovery: A literary Stimulus for Raising Women's Struggle in Pakistan
The awakening has spoken to women's issues across time in many corners of the world regardless of caste, faith, nationality. Being a semi-autobiographical American-Novel, The Awakening was a catharsis against the late-19th-century Victorian constraints on Southern American women. The text challenged the hold of Victorian shackles on women's social, personal, marital, and sexual rights. Although the text had poor critical reception in its own time, it was reaccredited in the 1950s. Since then, the novel has kept on enlightening its readers through its powerful female-characters across times and cultures. This study revisits how the text reflected women's individualism; how readers responded to it, and how it has contributed a change to women's position. The analogy also signifies the degree to which the study could encourage the suppressed women's voice in Pakistan against—social, personal, marital, sexual —injustices that are done to them under cultural shackles, religious romanticizing, and androcentric norms.
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The Awakening; feminism; women; late 19th-century; patriarchy; Pakistan; USA
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(1) Imran Ali
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Fatima Jinnah Women University (FJWU), Rawalpindi, Punjab, Pakistan.
(2) Uzma Imtiaz
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Fatima Jinnah Women University (FJWU), Rawalpindi, Punjab, Pakistan.
(3) Zainab Akram
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Sardar Bahadur Khan Women University, Quetta, Baluchistan, Pakistan.
Women, History And Faith: Suleri's Critique Of Pakistan's National Culture In Meatless Days And Boys Will Be Boys
Sara Suleri is divided between her fascination for her father's strong character and her repulsion for the consequent effect on woman's space in family life, connoting a critique of Pakistani patriarchal society in which women, irrespective of their social status, suffer from marginalization. Although Suleri's Boys Will Be Boys is an elegy for her father, as she announces in the sub-title of the work, she manages her tilt toward her father despite her advocacy of the woman's space miserably shrunk to domestic life in Pakistani society. Besides womenÂ’s position, she questions the dominant version of history and the state's political manipulation of religion for ulterior motives. She is close to Boehmer's theorization of the elitist continuities and intimacies with a view that develops from geographically and historically multiple contexts and histories. Her role as a native intellectual is two-pronged: her view is colored by Western discourse, but her status as a 'representative' Pakistani voice is also significant. This article analyzes how far Suleri's representation of women, religion and history of Pakistani society is colored by Western context.
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Pakistani Literature in English, Nation, Representation, Feminism, Patriarchy, Gender, Sara Suleri
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(1) Ghulam Murtaza
Associate Professor, Department of English, GC University Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan.
(2) Mazhar Hayat
Professor, Department of English, GC University Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan.
(3) Syed Ali Waqar Hashmi
Research Assistant, Department of English, GC University Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan.
Post-colonial Feminist Critique of Roys The God of Small Things
The present study intends to thoroughly examine the Postcolonial feminist perspective in Arundhati Roys novel The God of Small Things by focusing on the theoretical approaches of Gaytri Spivak, Trinh T.Minha and Ania Loomba. The ambivalent personality of colonized women is tarnished due to subalternity imposed by the patriarchal culture of India. The destructive nature of the Western Imperialism forced the people to endure wild oppression by British colonizers. Postcolonialism paved the way for the double oppression of women. Women became the victim of not only British Imperialists but also native cultural patriarchy. Roy successfully intricates three generations of women i.e Baby Kochamma, Mammachi, Ammu, and Rahel into the fabric of the novel to acme the plight of women in the Third World Nations..
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Postcolonialism, Feminism, Subaltern, British Imperialism, Colonized. Patriarchal Traditions.
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(1) Zahir Jang Khattak
Professor, Department of English,University of Qurtaba, Peshawar, KP, Pakistan.
(2) Hira Ali
Lecturer,Department of English,Sargodh University, Sargodha, Punjab, Pakistan.
(3) Shehrzad Ameena Khattak
PhD Scholar, Department of English,University of Qurtaba, Peshawar, KP, Pakistan.
The Rediscovery of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie: An Analysis from New Historicist, Historical Reception and Feminist Perspectives
A social documentary of Dreiser's milieu and own life, Sister Carrie (1900) portrays American women from multiple angles. As a genuine criticism of debased American values, the text describes women's social, personal, sexual, marital, and economic sides of contemporary American women through Carrie. Having a poor critical reception in the 1910s, the novel was rediscovered worldwide with new vigor since the mid-20th-century for its potent feminist message. Like in other countries, its importance has been felt Pakistani academia, where it is psychologically preparing the emerging woman for the forthcoming SocialDarwinist challenges. This study rediscovers Sister Carrie through the lenses of New Historicism, Historical Reception, and Feminism: why Dreiser wrote it; how the public/critics received it; how it contributed a change to the women's position; and how it could strengthen women's role in Pakistan.
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Rediscovery, Feminism, Social-Darwinism, Dreiser, Pakistani
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(1) Imran Ali
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Fatima Jinnah Women University The Mall, Rawalpindi, Punjab, Pakistan.
(2) Bahramand Shah
Assistant Professor, American Literature, Area Study Center, Quaidii-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Feminist Discourses and Multiple Identities: A Postcolonial Representation of Woman in Hyder's River of Fire
This research paper foregrounds the postcolonial representation of women in Hyder's River of Fire. The novel covers a large span of history. In the entire novel, the female writer presents a lot of women in the backdrop of socio-political and historical backdrop. The western totalizing and Universalist discourses of feminism do not explain well the scope of representation of women in this novel. Even third-world feminism does not suffice here. The research shows that the novelist consciously writes back the colonial and postcolonial feminist representation of women. The analysis highlights that the question of marginalization and subjugation must be seen with multiple factors such as history, society, culture and class. The novel presents multiple identities of women in the historical flux of more than two thousand years.
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Feminist Discourse, Multiple Identities, Postcolonial Feminism, Third World Feminism, Western Feminism
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(1) Kanwal Zahra
Assistant Professor, Centre for Languages and Translation Studies, University of Gujrat, Punjab, Pakistan.
(2) Ahmad Nadeem
Assistant Professor, Government Ambala Muslim College Sargodha, Punjab, Pakistan
(3) Aisha Jadoon
Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities, COMSATS, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Silencing the Silence: A Study of Women at Workplace
This paper highlights the extent of women marginalization through silencing their voices at workplaces in the Pashtun society. Using the construct "muted group" theory a qualitative study of the participants with ages between 25 and 32 at Abdul Wali Khan Universy, Mardan (Pakistan) was undertaken. The analysis of response reveals that both males and females work equally, share equal work load, and can perform their duties well together. It is significant that despite the appearance of unbiased equal treatment to males and females the societal biases effect a reality that is contradictory to the facade of equality. The study established that males make use of authoritative language because of which females feel reluctant to share their thoughts openly due to the fear of being rejected at the work place. They conform to male domination and in this way appease the macho ego of males. Moreover, females are often made fun of when they talk; consequently they choose to remain silent. This marginalization explains why men think that women cannot share their thoughts clearly or cannot speak logically without realizing that there is something wrong with the way they deal with women.
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Gender Discrimination, Feminism, Muted Group Theory, Discrimination, Work Place, Pashtun.
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(1) Sayed Mahrukh
Independent Researcher, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Pakistan
(2) Ayaz Ahmad
Lecturer, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Pakistan
(3) Liaqat Iqbal
Assistant Professor, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Pakistan
Socio-Cultural Trauma and Gender Objectification in Haider's How It Happened: A Cultural Feminist Study
The research aims to pinpoint the socio-cultural suppressive crisis faced by the Pakistani women and tends to evaluate the standards through which Pakistani women are (mis)recognized through Shazaf Fatima Haider's How It Happened (2012). It focuses upon the internalized social norms regarding women's conduct to achieve perfection and a state of acceptability which have terrifyingly placed a question mark upon women's existence. Zeba, being the protagonist of How It Happened, undergoes anunnerving situation, being continuously displayed as an object for her marriage. Simone de Beauvoir's cultural feminist ideologies in her work, The Second Sex(1997), tend to deconstruct falsely existing cultural archetypes. She illustrates in her work the transformative stages of women's life beginning from the oppressive state towards the protesting state. Consequently, celebrating women's strength by acknowledging biological differences. Through the methodological application of a Textual analytical apparatus, this research tends to reverse the suppressive patriarchal patterns, bringing women from the periphery to the center, also providing a voice to silenced women entangled in the fabricated culture.
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Gender, Feminism, Pakistani Literature in English, Fiction
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(1) Nida Tabassum
Visiting Lecturer, Department of English, National University of Modern Languages, Faisalabad Campus, Punjab, Pakistan.
(2) Muhammad Owais Ifzal
Lecturer, Department of English, Government College University Faisalabad, Hafizabad Campus, Punjab, Pakistan.
(3) Ghulam Murtaza
Associate Professor, Department of English, Government College University Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan.
Lack of Justice in Contemporary Society as Depicted in Ghani Khan's Poem Badshahi
This study is conducted to discover elements of injustice in contemporary society through the poetry of the Pashtun incredible and legendary poet Ghani Khan. The poetry of Ghani Khan depicts the elements of revolt, injustices, cruelty, and exploitation in his contemporary society. The social injustices, the enslavement of poor and deprived ones have been pointed out in his poetry. This research work is all about social injustice in contemporary society and the violation of human rights. Ghani Khan pass on a solid message in his poem ‘Badshahi’ that Allah is seeing all the creatures that how they are carrying out their obligations. The study prescribed a broader vision of modern society that running after this world is just like chasing after a shadow, you may get nothing. Individuals these days are running after luxuries and worldly wishes. But at the conclusion of the day this control, cash, and extravagances will get to be a revile for them.
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Injustice, Society, Poems, Rights, Feminism, Discrimination
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(1) Nazish
Lecturer, Department of English, Women University, Mardan, KP, Pakistan.
(2) Sadaf Riaz
Graduate Scholar, Department of English, Women University, Mardan, KP, Pakistan.
(3) Haseena Safdar
Graduate Scholar, Department of English, Women University, Mardan, KP, Pakistan.