Abstract
This chapter examines the agency of third-space gender subjectivity in Kamila Shamsie's novel Broken Verses (2005). To achieve this goal, two objectives are pursued in this chapter: First, it aims to interrogate and contest the reductive binary perception of women's gender identity in Pakistan as the secular and the religious. Second, it seeks to examine how the female characters, situated in their local power constellations in the novel, are empowered from their spatial mobility to redefine their gender subjectivity and expand their social spaces through performativity. It is argued that women's subjectivity transcends the set meanings associated with traditional religious or universalist secular womanhood. The chapter concludes that women's subjectivity, as shaped by their diverse sets of mobility, is variously inclusive, dynamic, fluid, and complex rather than monolithic, linear, or dualistic. The findings of the study contribute to the growing discourse that views gender and identity as constituent of and constituted by space and place at the same time.
TopIntroduction
Discursive binary between secular and religious ideological standpoints regarding Muslim women’s gender identity and rights pervades international academic scholarship and activism, with enormous increase in its production and intensity in the aftermath of the 9/11 – the era which has exacerbated the crisis of credibility between the West and Muslims (Abu-Lughod, 2002; L. Ahmed, 1982; Badran, 2005; DiQuinzio, 1993; Mahmood, 2005; Mir-Hosseini, 2006; Morey & Yaqin, 2011; A. S. Zia, 2018). Universalist feminist thoughts, which are usually associated with the West, have presented Muslim women as monolithic victims of the nexus between Islam and patriarchy and in need of saving (Mohanty, 1984; Morey & Yaqin, 2011; Tong, 2009). Whereas, Muslim scholars, mostly situated in Western academia, have written back by disputing the meanings of autonomy and agency and emphasizing Muslim women’s intentionality and self-cultivation (Abu-Lughod, 2002; Jamal, 2013; Mahmood, 2005; A. Zia, 2016). Pakistan, as a religious ideological nation-state, is a typical example of the discursive duality which originates from its colonial and pre-independence political history (Minault, 1998a), gets intensified during the state-patronized social Islamization in the 1980s (Grünenfelder, 2013; Jafar, 2005) and then is recently reinvigorated by the secularly sourced annual Aurat March (Women’s March) and reactionary Haya (modesty) marches by Islamist women (DAWN, 2020; A. S. Zia, 2020). The secular body politics and narrative of Aurat March have gained widespread media and public attention nationally and internationally – revitalizing the binaristic debate in the country (DAWN, 2020; Safdar & Yasmin, 2021a; A. S. Zia, 2020). The intensity between the secular and the religious may get further intensified in Pakistan in the current political context in which the sitting prime minister and his policies are pro-fundamentalists and also that rightists (Taliban) have taken over in the neighboring Afghanistan by defeating the US forces and ousting the local democratic government (Hussain, 2021a, 2021b). Taliban enjoy considerable ideological, cultural and political support from many in the public and the State of Pakistan, especially in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Both, Taliban and the State/public of Pakistan, share in constructing and using the nexus of Muslimness, masculinity and affective politics to advance their political and military interests (Khalid & Safdar, 2021; Khoja-Moolji, 2021). With regard to women’s empowerment and rights, religiously embedded viewpoints boast their local/authentic identity and groundedness in the place, and blame their ideological adversaries like secular feminists as agents of the West. Whereas, those inspired by secular standpoints reduce the religious as traditionalists and ploy in the hands of patriarchy. Drawing on the insights of Safdar and Yasmin (2021a), this chapter assumes that the revitalized dualistic discourses have largely blurred and ignored the significance and agency of the interstitial/third-space gender subjectivity which has been shaped by increased spatial mobility and redefined connections with place, home and identity. It assumes that Pakistani English fiction, especially by Kamila Shamsie, abounds with such Muslim female subjectivities which are spatially mobile, non-dualistic, inclusive, fluid and agentive in their ‘lived’ experiences in the fiction, and needs further scholarly attention from a non-dualistic perspective which is characterized by such nuanced conceptual framing that considers connection with the global as well as the local and its subjective agentiveness. Their gender subjectivity is shaped by mobility beyond traditional gendered spaces. Departing from the reductive binaristic approach, and building upon the concepts of constructedness and fluidity of identity and culture (Bhabha, 1994; Butler, 1990; Massey, 1994; McDowell, 1996, 1999; Nagar et al., 2002), this chapter examines how Muslim female characters in Kamila Shamsie’s novel Broken Verses (2005) negotiate mobility-shaped third-space gender subjectivity. It also foregrounds the efficacy/agency of the mobility-shaped negotiated third-space subjectivity which is neither exclusively secular nor religious.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Pakistani Muslim Female Subjectivity: The female gendered self which is shaped by religion Islam and the local culture in Pakistan.
Mobility-Shaped Gender Subjectivity: Gender of self which is shaped/framed through mobility beyond traditional place and space.
Performativity: Continuous making and remaking of gender through repeated enactment of it through diverse sets of contexts and discourses.
Subjectivity: Self in relation to outside social norms.
Space: Real-world geographical place, social relations and connections and geography of thoughts, imagination and thinking.
Mobility: Travel/movement which can be corporeal from one real geographical place to another or virtual from one place/space/time to another through internet, reading/visual material and communication technology, etc.
Third-Space: The cultural space which is non-binaristic. Here, in this chapter, the space which is neither conservatively religio-traditional nor universalist secular vis-à-vis gender performance.