Notes
Scholar reflects on wife's body
"Chughtai, Hossain and Durrani identify culture specific practices such as child marriage, dowry, son preference, polygamy, honor crimes and marital rape as primary sources of masculinist power that converts a wife's body into a site of oppression," said Dr. Hafiza Nilofar Khan to begin the 29th lecture of the Lecture Series on English Studies organized by the Department of English at IUB. Dr. Khan's talk on 'Treatment of a Wife's Body in the Writings of Three Sub-Continental Women Writers: Ismat Chughtai, Selina Hossain and Tehmina Durrani' was based on a comparative, cross-cultural feminist study conducted on the writings of Ismat Chughtai of India, Tehmina Durrani of Pakistan and Selina Hossain of Bangladesh as part of her Ph.D dissertation submitted to the English Department of University of Southern Mississippi in 2008. Dr. Khan's study of the fiction and autobiographical works of these writers reveals the deeply rooted deadly traditional modes of domestic violence. She says that their depiction of the sociological, religious and legal aspects of some of the sources of wife abuse reflects their reservations about the institutions of marriage, family, law and religion in the contemporary Sub-Continent. She adds that the everyday experiences of wives as depicted in their writings bespeak not only of their limited power to negotiate with patriarchy, but also of their own complex attitude towards hegemonic authority. She highlights that the stories of the authors under discussion provide extraordinary insight into the vulnerable position of wives caught in the complex web of Muslim families. They also show them as having the ability to manipulate their environment and demand recognition of individuality and self respect. The stark reality of the sexually frustrated wives, oppressed daughters-in-law, or despondent maids is also often redefined in the works of her authors in terms of opportunities for self-awareness. Dr. Khan briefly summarized the four chapters of her dissertation with specific emphasis on chapter four, which involves the wife's agency. Agency in contemporary theory refers to the "ability to act or perform an action." It can also be defined as something that "hinges on the question of whether individuals can freely and autonomously initiate action, or whether the things they do are in some sense determined by the ways in which their identity has been constructed." In this chapter, she argues that despite submitting to the male dominance, the wives of Chughtai, Durrani and Hossain employ certain strategies to manipulate traditions and fight socially enforced taboos and restrictions. She points out that despite being at different geographical locations these writers share several markers of collective belonging. She further argues that despite different kinds of ordeals, these wives have the ability to improve their lot by changing the fixed tropes of identity construction attached to them. Regarding a woman's sexuality, the three authors that Dr. Khan writes on echo Carole Vance as they believe that a woman's sexuality is "simultaneously a domain of restriction, repression and danger as well as of exploration, pleasure and agency." She concluded her talk with the mention of micro-mechanism of Harris Collette. According to Harris Collette, gossip is a micro mechanism of power that can help regulate moral action in society. Though gossip, rumour or scandal is not a radical mode of action, it builds sufficient moral surveillance in tight communities. In Blasphemy, Heer uses gossip as a strategy to avenge her Pir (religious guru) husband who is a sexual molester and fraud. After his death she reveals the real identity of 'Pyari' to the men with whom her husband had forced her to sleep. She also sells copies of their sex videos to a Pathan in order to spread the word about her husband's true nature. In her own life Durrani herself tried to harness public opinion against her former husband through scandalous exposure and gossip in order to counter his violence and extra marital affair. The talk was held on Wednesday, 26 January 2011. At the end, Professor Razia Sultana Khan, Head, Department of English and Department of Modern Languages thanked the speaker for her stimulating talk and others for their presence. Professor Nazrul Islam, Director, School of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and Dr. Tanvir A. Khan, Registrar of IUB also attended the lecture.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments