UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Gendered and Sexual Politics of Excess in Nationalist Narrations of Pakistan Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8gj873hm Author Minai, Naveen Zehra Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Gendered and Sexual Politics of Excess In Nationalist Narrations of Pakistan A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Gender Studies by Naveen Zehra Minai 2014 © Copyright by Naveen Zehra Minai 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Gendered and Sexual Politics of Excess In Nationalist Narrations of Pakistan by Naveen Zehra Minai Doctor of Philosophy in Gender Studies University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Purnima Mankekar, Chair Since 2001, Pakistan has become a highly visible location for the US-led War on Terror. This visibility is based on, and has produced, a transnational circuit of representations of Pakistan. Pakistan is either condemned as an exceptional failure of the nation-state, or redeemed through exceptional nationalist figures of courage and resistance. Such representations have material consequences for Pakistanis, including elisions between anti-state struggles due to injustice and inequality, sectarian violence, and transnational war machines based in Pakistan. This dissertation explores the transnational politics of class, gender, and sexuality of these representations. The tropes deployed by these narrations attempt to manage an epistemological, emotional, and material excess of lives that cannot be contained by the categorical structure of the Pakistani nation-state. ii I analyze the 2012 film “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” by Mira Nair, based on Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 novel; the 1998 film, “Jinnah,” by Jamil Dehlavi; and the 2008 novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif. “Jinnah” focuses on the partition of India in 1947. A Case of Exploding Mangoes is set in 1988 during the last days of General Zia-ul-Haq’s military regime. “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” is about the attacks on New York City on September 11, 2001. Through a methodological combination of literary and cultural studies, I situate the texts in the historical context of each moment of crisis, and examine their international circulation amongst wider representations of Pakistan. My theoretical framework is based in transnational, postcolonial, feminist of color, and queer of color scholarship. I use this scholarship to locate excess in genealogies, bodies, emotions, practices, and communities which contest nationalist narrations of Pakistan. This dissertation is part of transnational Pakistani scholarship which tries to imagine Pakistan differently, through neither condemnation nor redemption. Such scholarship elucidates transnational politics of gender, sexuality, and class that undergird nationalist claims on the idea and space of Pakistan. Excess is a moment in the stakes and consequences of these representations are illuminated, at which one can choose to turn towards transnational, postcolonial, feminist, antiracist, and queer of color practices of responsible and responsive solidarity between communities. iii The dissertation of Naveen Zehra Minai is approved. Aamir R. Mufti Sondra Hale Purnima Mankekar, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2014 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Introduction Bibliography 24 Chapter 1 27 The Road to Pakistan: The Philic Orientalism of Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist Chapter 1 Bibliography 132 Chapter 2 137 In the Name of the Father: Jinnah and the Origin Story of Pakistan Chapter 2 Bibliography 210 Chapter 3 215 Even if it Feels so Good? Fathers, Sons, and Everything in Between in A Case of Exploding Mangoes Chapter 3 Bibliography 295 Epilogue 300 Epilogue Bibliography 305 v VITA Naveen Minai House 106, 10th Street, Khayaban-e-Muhafiz, Phase VI, D.H.A, Karachi 75500 [email protected] Education University of California Los Angeles—Los Angeles, CA Department of Gender Studies, September 2014 Advisers: Purnima Mankekar (Chair), Mishuana Goeman, Sondra Hale, Aamir R. Mufti Loughborough University—Loughborough, UK Bachelor of Arts (Honors), December 2006 Major: Politics Minor: Communication and Media Studies Thesis: “A Radical Feminist Critique of Key Concepts in Liberalism” Advisers: Helen Drake (Chair), Ruth Kinna, Moya Lloyd Fellowships and Awards 2009-2014 Pakistan Foreign Fulbright Scholarship Research Experience Winter 2011-2012 UCLA South Asia Working Group—University of California, Los Angeles Organized reading schedule quarter by quarter Coordinated readings and presentations between members Organized meeting locations and times Spring 2011 UCLA Gender Studies Colloquium on Pedagogy—University of California, Los Angeles Teaching Experience University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA Guest Lecture for TA Jessica Martinez Gender Studies 10: Feminist Perspectives of Women and Society (Spring 2011) Guest Lecture for TA Jacob Lau Gender Studies 10: Feminist Perspectives of Women and Society (Spring 2011) vi Major Research Papers Completed “Carefully Choreographed Contempt”: Sovereignty and Masculinity at the Wagah Border The Mystic and the Rebel: Lalla Zaynab, Isabelle Eberhardt, and the Gendered and Racial Politics of Rebellion Indigenous Interstices: A Different Economy of Bodies and Pleasures in the Poetry of Qwo-Li Driskill Muhammed the Man: Politics of Islam and Modernity in the Autobiography of Muhammed Asad “We’re God’s unwanted children, so be it!”: The Gendered Politics of Shame and Anger in David Fincher’s “Fight Club” Conferences February 2010 Thinking Gender: Annual Graduate Student Conference University of California, Los Angeles Making the Sexual Political: Women’s Transnational Collective Actions April 2012 Fifth Annual DC Queer Studies Symposium University of Maryland, College Park Indigenous Interstices: A Different Economy of Bodies and Pleasures in the poetry of Qwo-Li Driskill November 2012 National Women’s Studies Association Conference Oakland Marriott City Center “What was left behind?”: Colonial Temporalities and Indigenous Embodiments of Time and Space in the poetry of Qwo-Li Driskill Professional Experience 2011 - 2012 Department of Gender Studies—University of California, Los Angeles Graduate Representative to the Faculty March 2008 - June 2009 Berlitz Language Center—Karachi, Pakistan Part-time English Language Instructor July 2007 - January 2008 Friends of Literacy and Mass Education—Karachi, Pakistan Resource Manager November 2006 - June 2007 Concern for Children Trust—Karachi, Pakistan Project Manager, Machar Colony vii Introduction Zero Dark Thirty Pakistan was ranked the third most dangerous country for women in 2011.1 The Economist declared Pakistan the world’s most dangerous place in 2008.2 Newsweek proclaimed Pakistan the most dangerous country in the world in 2007,3 and reiterated this in 2010. “The World’s Most Dangerous Nation Holds An Election” was a headline in Forbes in 2013.4 Former British Defense Secretary Liam Fox named Pakistan the most dangerous country in the world in 2013. 5The United Nations named Pakistan the most dangerous country in the world for journalists in 2014.6 These are the stories produced and circulated about Pakistan. These stories have made impressions on me as a Pakistani.7 It is the epistemological and material stakes and consequences embedded in these impressions that have motivated me to write this dissertation. In the preface to the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Orientalism, Edward Said writes, “I have long felt that a special intellectual and moral responsibility attaches to what we do as 1 “Pakistan ranks 3rd on list of most dangerous countries for women,” The Express Tribune, June 15, 2011, accessed July 15, 2014, http://tribune.com.pk/story/189294/pakistan-ranks-3rd-on-list-of-most-dangerous-countries-for- women/ 2 “The World’s Most Dangerous Place.” The Economist, January 3, 2008, accessed July 15, 2014, http://www.economist.com/node/10430237 3 Ron Moreau, “Pakistan: The Most Dangerous?” Newsweek, October 20, 2007, accessed July 15, 2014, http://www.newsweek.com/pakistan-most-dangerous-102955 4 Doug Bandow, “The Islamic Republic of Pakistan: The World’s Most Dangerous Nation Holds An Election,” Forbes, May 20, 2013, accessed July 15, 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougbandow/2013/05/20/the-islamic- republic-of-pakistan-the-worlds-most-dangerous-nation-holds-an-election/ 5 Rob Crilly, “Liam Fox Upsets Pakistan after calling it ‘the most dangerous country in the world,’” The Telegraph, September 10, 2013, accessed July 15, 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/10299252/Liam-Fox-upsets-Pakistan-after-calling-it-the- most-dangerous-country-in-the-world.html 6 Masood Haider, “Pakistan most dangerous country for journalists: UN,” Dawn, May 4, 2014, accessed July 15, 2014, http://www.dawn.com/news/1104120 7 Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2004). 1 scholars.”8 Said insists that speaking about injustice and suffering must always be done “within a context that is amply situated in history, culture, and socioeconomic reality.”9 I am a Pakistani woman who has the privilege of class and education. This privilege affords me not only access to transnational academic spaces, it also enables me to speak English as the language of so much transnational circulation.