Patriarchal Recolonization: Exploring the Agency Exercised By Women as Subalterns Through Postcolonial Feminism in A House Without Windows

  • Hamna Imran Chaudhary Kinnaird College for Women
  • Tehreem Arsalan Aurakzai Lecturer Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore Pakistan
Keywords: Postcolonial feminism, double colonization, representation, essentialism, subaltern

Abstract

The research study contests the established notion of a house, by analyzing Nadia Hashimi’s A House Without Windows through the lens of postcolonial feminism. It inspects whether a home, proclaimed as a secured place for women, succeeds in justifying this claim in an Afghani society. It further explores the agency women exercise as subalterns in the Afghani culture due to the prevailing ‘double colonization.’ Their ‘representation’ by a female author, and within the text by the male hegemonic discourse, is speculated to identify their being as the voiced or the unvoiced, the silenced or the unheard. The research challenges the question raised in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s essay Can the Subaltern Speak? by analyzing whether the subaltern can be heard and read, or not. It aims to highlight how the silenced subaltern becomes empowering in the face of patriarchal recolonization; silence, emerging as a weapon that helps women secure their agency to a great extent.

Published
2024-06-25