Representations of nation, gender and diaspora : a postcolonial study of selected Pakistani novels in English

Abstract

This study examines the reimagination of nation in terms of the gendered and the diasporic identitiesin six Pakistani novels in English. I examine the depictions of family, home and history in these novels and discuss the counter–histories that emerge as a means of questioning the nationalist narratives. This project contributes to discussion of the relationship between the nation, gender and diaspora and postcolonial novel in English. It explains that how postcolonial nationalism reconfigures understandings of the construction of the nation-state in an increasingly globalised world. In this study, I draw upon Benedict Anderson’s idea of imagined communities and Homi Bhabha’s concept that separate the idea of home from the unhomely or the uncanny. I examine how the novels reimagine nation in terms of the marginalised spaces and voices that include female subalterns, migrants and other less privileged members of society. I utilise Homi Bhabha’s concept of third space to explore how the marginalised characters occupy the liminal spaces between the patriarchal controlled national, socio-political and economic spheres and the spaces of exclusion. I also draw upon the works of Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Kumari Jayawardena, Uma Narayan, James Clifford and Roger Brubaker, to argue that these novels prompt a reconsideration of centralised patriarchal control in order to rethink a more inclusive national identity from feminist and migrant perspective. The six chapters of the study are organised chronologically according to publication dates of the novels by the three novelists under discussion. The first two chapters provide introduction, literature review and theoretical framework to set the ground for upcoming discussion. Chapter three focusses on the novels by Bapsi Sidhwa and examines that how the nation’s identity of Pakistan is reimagined in terms of the hybridity of British/colonial and Pre-partition, local cultures, the Partition violence and the migrant identities. Chapter four explains how the representation of national history in Kamila Shamsie’s two novels is both a forward and backward looking ambivalent process. In both the novels, nation is reimagined in terms of the feminist and migrant identities. The fifth chapter discusses the ‘change’ and ‘transition’ in the shifting modern life where the national identities are captured vis á vis the global citizenships as conceived in Mohsin Hamid’s novels. The chapter six concludes this discussion and explains how the discussion of nation, gender and diaspora intersects with postcolonial discourse, to establish the relevance of Pakistani novel in English as a narrative of contemporary world.