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Proquest Dissertations IN LOVE AND WAR: THE POLITICS OF ROMANCE IN FOUR 21M-CENTURY PAKISTANI NOVELS CRISTY LEE DUCE B.Ed. University of Alberta, 2006 A Thesis, Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies of the University of Lethbridge in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS Department of English University of Lethbridge LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA, CANADA © Cristy Lee Duce, 2011 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-82315-6 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-82315-6 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lntemet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciaies ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada Abstract Writers of fiction have long since relied on love, romance, and desire to drive the plots of their work, yet some postcolonial authors use romance and interpersonal relationships to illustrate the larger political and social forces that affect their relatively marginalized experiences in a global context. To illustrate this literary strategy, I have chosen to discuss four novels written in the twenty-first century by Pakistani authors: The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, Trespassing by Uzma Aslam Khan, The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam, and Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie. With the geographical origin of these writers as a common starting place from which to compare and contrast their perspectives on global politics, their understandings of gender, and their perceptions of how the public and the private constitute and intersect each other, I will use postcolonial theory to dissect the treatment of romance in their respective novels. iii Acknowledgements I would very much like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Maria Ng, whose patience, time, and energy were invaluable to the completion of this project. Her focusing critique and wealth of knowledge grounded my study. She truly exemplifies the life of a scholar. I would also like to thank Dr. Tiffany Muller-Myrdahl who provided a human anchor for me within academia and warded off theoretical "paralysis." Her non-required efforts and unpresuming discussion greatly enhanced my graduate experience. Thank you to my committee members, Dr. Suzanne Lenon and Dr. Patrick Wilson, whose flexibility, accommodation, and feedback were greatly appreciated. Lastly, thank you to my parents. To my mother who memorized the books she read to me and took me to the library until I could ride my bike there. To my father who believed I could be everything. IV Table of Contents Introduction 1 Four Pakistani Novels 3 Politics and Literature 7 The Context of Pakistan 9 The Use of English by Pakistani Writers 14 Feminism and Colonial Practice 17 Love as Literary Trope 20 Analysis By Novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist 24 Trespassing 36 The Wasted Vigil 49 Burnt Shadows 64 Conclusion 77 Works Cited 79 v Introduction Writers of fiction have long since relied on love, romance, and desire to drive the plots of their work, yet some postcolonial authors use romance and interpersonal relationships to illustrate the larger political and social forces that affect their relatively marginalized experiences in a global context. To illustrate this literary strategy, I have chosen to discuss four novels written in the twenty-first century by Pakistani authors: Tbe Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, Trespassing by Uzma Aslam Khan, The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam, and Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie. With the geographical origin of these writers as a common starting place from which to compare and contrast their perspectives on global politics, their understandings of gender, and their perceptions of how the public and the private constitute and intersect each other, I will use postcolonial theory to dissect the treatment of romance in their respective novels. My own entrance into Pakistani literature was somewhat of a meandering one. I first encountered postcolonial literature in an undergraduate course taken after my undergraduate degree and found myself most engaged with novels from the Indian subcontinent, fascinated by the political concerns and the multiple layers of oppression faced by many of the characters that were so foreign to my middle-class Canadian upbringing. Perhaps at first it was an experience with the exotic that drew me in, the introduction to new and alien lands and cultures, but as I continued my studies, I was most interested in how the voices within the novels felt about such subjects as global politics and Western imperialism and where my own nation fit in terms of worldwide schematics. I was captivated by the potential of fiction to create understanding and transcend borders in a way that news reports and political pundits had failed to. As I had 1 grown up mainly unconcerned with oppression in my own life, sparing only a few cursory thoughts for the World Vision "less-fortunates" oceans away, it was the injustices based on gender, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and geography that held my attention and motivated me to explore further study in postcolonial theory, feminist theory, globalization, and political theory. In my resulting reading of South Asian fiction, I also found that the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001 and the resulting War of/on Terror increasingly served as focal point within the fiction that followed these events, and perhaps even elicited a greater number of politically oriented texts originating from within the region most affected.1 Though these events have inarguably affected the relationships and actions of nearly every state in the world, perspectives on the reasons for them and opinions on what the reactions to them should have been and should be in the future, have varied as much as the number of these states and the individuals within them. These perspectives and opinions have unavoidably been influenced by the information presented by the available media and constructed by personal and cultural experience and therefore tend to be geographically and rhetorically similar. Consequently, the region of Central/South Asia was of particular interest to me since it is located at the site of what became global military activity, though, as I came to learn, foreign activity and involvement was by no means a new phenomenon in the area, but was more accurately the intensified repetition of a pattern of imperialism and exploitation. In essence, I was interested in the voices of 1 The term "War of/on Terror" comes from the Zillah Eisenstein's Against Empire, in which she points out the hypocrisy of the United States government in "appropriating] 'democracy' for its own global agenda, and displacing] 'terrorism' to others elsewhere, though, through violence, war, globalization, and the neglect of the social welfare of its own citizens, it produces more terror than any of its declared enemies (11). 2 a region that so many other voices were speaking and writing about, yet whose viewpoints were largely ignored in my own culture. All of this, as well as an appreciation for the literary style of several currently writing Pakistani authors resulted in a geographical theme in this thesis. Four Pakistani Novels In order to discuss differences in terms of style and subject matter between writers, the country of their birth and their tendency toward politically oriented fiction are the only commonalities amongst the authors I have chosen to examine. Though there are common motifs running through all of the texts I have selected, I have chosen instead to compare and contrast different themes in each of them, while using the trope of love and romance in the plots as the unifying idea through which other themes are explored. The first text I will look at is perhaps the simplest and also the most problematic of the group. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, though short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2007 and winning several other awards, is alarmingly one-dimensional in its treatment of gender and global politics. Its plot centers on the first-person recollection of Changez, a Pakistani national who attended an American Ivy-League university and was working for a prestigious business evaluation firm in New York when the attacks of 9/11 suddenly changed the American political climate as well as the attitude of Americans toward his Pakistani roots and Islamic identity.
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