Gender in Hamid's Fiction

Asian Women June 2018, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 89-109, https://doi.org/10.14431/aw.2018.06.34.2.89 Gender in Hamid’s Fiction: A Reflection on the Cultural Paradigm Shift Brewing among Pakistani Women Muhammad Safdar University of Management and Technology, Pakistan Muhammad Usman Ghani Prince Sattam bin Abdul Aziz University, Saudi Arabia Abstract Modern women are not satisfied with the roles traditionally ascribed to them as obligatory; they rather feel stifled by them. Pakistani women, especially urban women with global exposure, are no exceptions. Hamid’s two novels under study, Moth smoke (2000) and How to get filthy rich in rising Asia (2013), underline the evolving cultural transformation in Pakistan regarding female sexuality and gender in the wake of global cultural interactions. Based on the postmodern theories of fluid and performatively differential identity by cultural theorist Homi K Bhabha and feminist theorist Judith Butler, this study seeks to analyze the transformation of the urban Pakistani woman who is constantly exposed to global cultures by means of globalization and is influenced to redefine her sexuality and gender, through textual analysis of the major female characters of Hamid’s two novels referenced above. The study also analyses how the modern Pakistani woman, embarked on her journey to self-fulfilment, defies the religio-culturally sacred institutions of wifehood and motherhood, finding them to be restrictive. However, the resisting impact of the place (i.e., Pakistan) is also obvious; these displaced women are not totally without feelings of anxiety. In addition to contributing to the contemporary discourse on the blurring of boundaries caused by the increasing connection between spatial scales, particularly the local and the global, this paper attempts to make a contribution in the areas of fluidity in sexuality and gender in Pakistani context. Key words female sexuality, gender, culture, globalization, Mohsin Hamid, Pakistan 90 ❙ Muhammad Safdar⋅Muhammad Usman Ghani Introduction Empowered by increasing awareness and mobility gained through global interconnectivity, women in Pakistan are increasingly defying patriarchy and provoking a re-standardization of the local perceptions regarding gender and sexuality. According to the data retrieved from family courts in the provincial metropolis Lahore and published in Pakistani mainstream media, khula (Islamic legal avenue to divorce sought by women through courts) cases registered in the Punjab in 2012 were 13,299 which increased to 14,243 in 2013, and to 16,942 in 2014. In 2016, the number of khula cases went up to 18,901; around 259,064 separations have taken place in Lahore over the last decade. It indicates a rise of over 40 per cent in four years. The noose of sexual repression and control tightened around women by patriarchy in the name of morality in developing societies like Pakistan appears to be fast loosening as a result of continuous increase in the exposure of Western cultures to the non-western world (Altman, 2004; Brownell & Wasserstrom, 2002; Sassen, 1998)—the contribution of feminist movements resulting in growing awareness about women’s rights, legislations to protect them and the growing number of women getting higher education and en- tering the job market also cannot be ignored. The penetration of the popu- lar culture of the West to the East has muddled the fixed patriarchal struc- tures of the society. Phenomena like colonization, globalization, and migra- tion are largely responsible for breaking the local attachments or sense of belonging of the women to their native places and gradually encouraging them to deviate from following the local customs, practices, and mores. Though the inroads of the Western culture into the East are, as yet, largely limited to just the private lives of those who move geographically and/or have comparatively greater access to the means that connect them with the rest of the world (Altman, 2004), the society, as a whole, with all its traditional ways of living appears to be under the process of transformation de- spite renewed intense resistance from the local traditional and religiously fundamentalist circles. This continuous and increasing invasion of the local, traditional, and patriarchal cultures (accelerated by globalization) by Western cultural practices has set off a cultural paradigm shift in the Third World nation states (Pakistan being one of these), to which even the long-standing cultural and religious taboos have been no exception. Given the current trend of this cultural transformation, it is argued that many of the in- Asian Women 2018 Vol.34 No.2 ❙ 91 digenous religio-culturally sacred institutions such as wifehood and motherhood are being compromised in the country; they are either losing their originality or are being replaced by more viable alternatives through the fluid processes of cultural interactions and integrations. We can now see women walking around freely in and sometimes even ruling over areas that had previously been exclusively the domain of men and tabooed for women to tread in. Women, though collectively not so independent and empowered as yet in Pakistan, nor considered in the society at large to be com- pletely equal to men, are individually, in their private lives, venturing into businesses, earning for their families, travelling across the globe, writing on issues, driving on roads, having sexual relationships outside marriage. A few even have ceased to believe that the institution of nikah (the Islamic religious ritual that legitimises sexual relations between male and female) is necessary for sexual intercourse, taking lead in matters of sex, denying the superiority of men, and doing everything that is traditionally ascribed to the male. But writing about such themes in the society of Pakistan, especially after the Zia era (which is known for its strict interpretations of Islamic injunctions to support oppressive patriarchal designs), has been a daunting task. Mohsin Hamid (though not the first to write on gender and sexuality in Pakistan), in his trendsetting fiction, highlights these tabooed themes in a remarkably bold way. Studies on Hamid’s fiction have mostly focused on the themes of class stratifications, corruption of the rich, reaction to the labels of terrorist, hybridity, and binarism and the search for identity (Arif & Zahir, 2015; Hartnell, 2010; Kiran, 2013; Kumar, 2012; Morey, 2011). None of the available studies has made it its exclusive subject to examine the threat to the conventional patriarchal social structure posed by the re- definitions of women’s sexuality and gender in the wake of globalization as depicted in the ground-breaking fiction by the novelist. The “cultural turn” (Richardson, 2007, p. 458) associated with post- modernism and the rise of queer theory has led to reappraisal of sexuality and gender, and new articulations of identity have emerged that negate the binary, fixed, and structural relationship between genders, shifting the em- phasis onto the transient, fluid, and dynamic nature of identities and cultures. Richardson notes in one of his studies about the relationship between gender and sexuality that “this theoretical shift to understanding gender and sexuality in terms of performativity associated with the work of Butler (1990, 1996) has opened up new areas for analysis and debate” (p. 92 ❙ Muhammad Safdar⋅Muhammad Usman Ghani 458). Interestingly, Bhabha’s (1994) cultural theory of the third space high- lighting performative identity coincides with Butler’s—thus providing the theoretical pillars for the framework of this study. This article, therefore, argues that exposure to Western culture through globalization is gradually reconfiguring women’s identity in Pakistan, who are observed remolding and/or rejecting the feminist spaces that they are traditionally identified with. Given the level of mobility to and connectivity with the means of global culture, as compared with rural areas of the country, this cultural in- fluence is largely limited to urban areas. This study seeks to analyse the transformation of only those Pakistani urban women that are exposed to global cultures by means of globalization, and are influenced to renegotiate their sexuality and gender. Through textual analysis of the major female characters of two of Hamid’s novels, Moth smoke (2000) and How to get filthy rich in rising Asia (2013), this paper explores how women in the urban settings of Pakistan, influenced by their connection with the Western liberal culture through their geographical movement and means of globalisation, are redefining their sexuality and gender. It also analyses how such women in Pakistan are eroding the long-standing religio-cultural institutions of wifehood and motherhood. The analyses are carried out through a close reading and interpretation of the statements and life styles of the selected characters and their descriptions given by the writer in the novels. In addition to contributing to the contemporary discourse on the blurring of boundaries caused by the increasing connection between spatial scales, particularly the local and the global, this study attempts to initiate a discourse on the areas of fluidity in sexuality and gender in the context of Pakistan. The selected novels portray the Pakistani society of the late 20th and ear- ly 21st centuries, the period when the country was growingly accepting means of global interconnectivity. Hamid’s women, those dwelling in urban settings in both the novels, charged by the power of a changed socio-eco- nomic and technological situation, take off and soar high, refuting the restrictive stereotypes patriarchy has long associated with their sex. The image of a true practising Islamic woman has largely disappeared from the lives of most of these urban women. Non-fixity of Culture and Performativity of Gender Identity There is little sexuality-oriented research in Pakistan. This study, there- Asian Women 2018 Vol.34 No.2 ❙ 93 fore, attempts to make a contribution by analyzing fluidity in the sexual and gender identity of Pakistani women in the literary works of Mohsin Hamid.

Load more