(Re)Framing Women in Post-Millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran

Remediated Witnessing in Literary, Visual, and Digital Media

Rachel Gregory Fox

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000547634
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Literatur
• Categoría: Literaturkritik für weibliche Autoren

This book critically examines the representational politics of women in post-millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran across a range of literary, visual, and digital media. Introducing the conceptual model of remediated witnessing, the book contemplates the ways in which meaning is constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed as a consequence of its (re)production and (re)distribution. In what ways is information re framed? The chapters in this book therefore analyse the reiterative processes via which Afghan, Pakistani, and Iranian women are represented in a range of contemporary media. By considering how Muslim women have been exploited as part of neo-imperial, state, and patriarchal discourses, the book charts possible—and unexpected—routes via which Muslim women might enact resistance. What is more, it asks the reader to consider how they, themselves, embody the role of witness to these resistant subjectivities, and how they might do so responsibly, with empathy and accountability.

Acknowledgements

Writing this book as an early career researcher has been a massive undertaking. Produced over the course of multiple job contracts, alongside several house moves and during a global pandemic, the endeavour has, at times, felt like an impossible task. That it exists at all is as much due to the support, love, and patience of many, many people as it is to my own ability to sit down and write, and I wish to take some time here to truly offer my thanks to them all.

While it has changed shape since, this book began life while carrying out my doctorate at Lancaster University. I am, without question, indebted to my PhD supervisor, Lindsey Moore—her honest and constructive feedback, her encouragement and guidance, and her continued conviction in my abilities have made me a better researcher, writer, and teacher. I am also grateful to my examiners, Kamilla Elliott and Carolyn Pedwell, who provided me with a challenging and stimulating viva and whose feedback on my thesis has been integral to the development of this book. Further to this, I would like to thank Claire Chambers and Anastasia Valassopoulos for their belief in my research and their supportive and thought-provoking feedback during the early stages of this book’s development.

There are numerous staff in the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing at Lancaster University who I wish to thank, who provided guidance, support, and mentorship during my time there: Brian Baker, Arthur Bradley, Jo Carruthers, Philip Dickinson, Hilary Hinds, Zoe Lambert, Liz Oakley-Brown, Catherine Spooner, Andrew Tate, and Janet Tyson.

There are so many more people I met and became friends with at Lancaster—with whom I attended research seminars, drank cups of tea, chatted in offices, hung out in corridors, ate cake, watched Eurovision, went to the cinema, and much, much more. Even since moving away, these people have continued to play a role in my life, and I am forever thankful for their continued friendship, the video calls, the emails, the Christmas cards, and the promises to reunite in person once it is safe to do so again. With my deepest gratitude, I would like to thank Mariam Aboelezz, Andy Ainscough, Kirsty Bennett, Andrew Brassington, Tom Brassington, Ruth Byrne, Hiyem Cheurfa, Beth Cortese, Sionadh Curtis, Stephen Curtis, Nour Dakkak, Ellie Evans, Lorrae Fox, Rebecca Gibson, Danielle Girard, Inés Gregori Labarta, Madonna Der Kaloustian, Abbie Jones, Ahmad Qabaha, Dawn Stobbart, Greg Walker, Rachel White, and Joanne Wood.

And then we move to Queen Mary, University of London, where this book has well and truly grown into what it is today. My time at Queen Mary has not been without its trials, but if I were to be a precariously employed early career researcher in the midst of a pandemic, I am glad it was with my most excellent colleagues in the School of English and Drama. I am incredibly grateful for the support, guidance, and friendships I’ve found at Queen Mary. Thank you Rehana Ahmed, Nadia Atia, Rachael Gilmour, Scott McCracken, Lucinda Newns, and Charlotta Salmi. Also in London—Sophia Brown and Nora Parr. I am also incredibly thankful for my students. Teaching is often seen to take time away from writing—and it surely does—but I have found that the enjoyment and critical engagement my students show towards the literature they study has often motivated and inspired me in my own research. Some of my own most important learning happens when I’m at the front of the seminar room, and I wish to never take that for granted.

Finally, I must express my most heartfelt thanks to my family.

Thank you to my brother, Simon, for his good humour, his dependability, and (without even a hint of irony) the free tech support.

I am also forever grateful for my mum. She offers very little useful advice by way of book writing and editing (‘I have too many words’, I lament. ‘Use scissors’! she exclaims, in a tone that suggests she is not necessarily joking), but she remains such an important person in my life. Her kindness, her generosity, her resilience, her love—all these things sustain me in everything I do. I will never have words grand enough to express just how much she means to me. We lost my dad too soon, and I hold him close, as I know my mum does too. Even though he’s no longer here, he deserves every bit of recognition for the woman I have become; for the woman he raised me to be. The grief never fully goes away, but his love remains with me also.

At last, I come to my husband, Alan, to whom this book is dedicated. His surety in my abilities, his reassurance, his kindness, his love … all these things and more have carried me through these last few turbulent and anxious years. Even when we didn’t know where home was, you built one for us out of words. Thank you.

***

Earlier versions of part of the work featured in Chapters 3 and 4 have previously appeared as:

Fox, R. (2016) ‘Mourning Mothers in Iran: Narratives and Counter-Narratives of Grievability and Martyrdom’, in M. A. Pappano and D. M. Olwan (eds.) Muslim Mothering: Local and Global Histories, Theories, and Practices. Ontario: Demeter Press.

Fox, R. (2018) ‘Writing Back and/as Activism: Refiguring Victimhood and Remapping the Shooting of Malala Yousafzai’, in A. Kanwal and S. Aslam (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Pakistani Anglophone Writing: Origins, Contestations, New Horizons. London and New York: Routledge.

This material is reproduced here with kind permission by Demeter Press and Taylor & Francis Informa UK Ltd.

Excerpt(s) from HOME FIRE: A NOVEL by Kamila Shamsie, copyright © 2017 by Kamila Shamsie. Used by permission of Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. And by kind permission from © Kamila Shamsie, 2017, Home Fire, Bloomsbury Circus, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Mona Hatoum’s billboard Over my Dead Body is included with permission from the artist via the Design and Artists Copyright Society:

Mona Hatoum, Over my Dead Body, 1988, Billboard, ink on paper, 204 × 304 cm (80 1/4 × 119 3/4 in.). © Mona Hatoum. 2021.

Introduction (Re)Framing Women in Post-Millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran

DOI: 10.4324/9781003270072-1

This book critically examines the representational politics of women in post-millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran across a range of literary, visual, and digital media. Introducing my conceptual model of remediated witnessing, this book contemplates the ways in which meaning is constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed as a consequence of its (re)production and (re)distribution. The prefix ‘re’ is strategically used here and throughout the book to indicate how information is reframed when it is presented and disseminated by different people, to different audiences, via different media, and from different ideological perspectives. (Re)Framing Women in Post-Millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran ultimately asks what new meanings might emerge when information is exposed to consecutive readings and viewings and then reproduced and redistributed within different contexts? What generative potential resides in those moments of reiteration and, ultimately, relationality and connectivity that unfold as part of the process of remediation?

The chapters in this book analyse the reiterative processes through which Afghan, Pakistani, and Iranian women are represented in a range of contemporary literature and media, including photography, non-fiction, graphic novels, fiction, and digital platforms. Assessing a breadth of literary, visual, and digital media, written in and/or translated into English, the book critically considers and works to deconstruct the patriarchal and/or neo-imperial ideological frames within which Afghan, Pakistani, and Iranian women are represented in the twenty-first century. With a particular emphasis on visual culture, the first half of the book primarily focuses on how Muslim women are framed (and reframed) within the context of the global ‘War on Terror’, following the terrorist attacks that took place on 11 September 2001. Following this, the second part of this book critically considers how Afghan, Pakistani, and Iranian women are framed (and reframed) within specific national contexts, particularly in relation to acts of martyrdom and mourning. The model of remediated witnessing, as this book elucidates, prompts us to look at what constitutes a particular material or ideological frame, via which meaning and identities are fixed into place, and to consider that which is occluded or elided from the narrative. What, or who, is cut out of the frame? What, or who, can we not see or hear? By learning to pay attention to the frames and cuts by which meaning and identities are constructed, we are presented with opportunities to not only deconstruct meaning but also reconstruct it. Telling the story from a different perspective—showing it from a different angle—presents opportunities to reframe hegemonic neo-imperial, state, and/or patriarchal discourses and the violence of negation.¹

The book contends that the model of remediated witnessing can be utilised to expose and/or facilitate the resistant subjectivity of Afghan, Pakistani, and Iranian women. Expanding on the theoretical categories of ‘subaltern’ and ‘agency’, I consider how gendered subaltern identities are constituted within the hierarchical relationship between agential and subject(ed) positions and negotiate ways in which this relationship can be reconfigured. As the book unfolds, I demonstrate how the model of remediated witnessing can be employed to reformulate the categories of subject(ed) and agential identity assigned to Afghan, Pakistani, and Iranian women. By simultaneously acknowledging and cutting through neo-imperial, state, and/or patriarchal ideological frames, which are (re)roduced and (re)distributed across a variety of different media, I argue that a space emerges where represented female identities can occupy both subject(ed) and agential positions. To embody a resistant subjectivity is to articulate or enact dissidence from within structures of power. Such acts are mediated by, but also, and of particular note, mediate—and thus intimately affect—the sociopolitical frameworks within which they occur. Analysing the various material contexts within which Afghan, Pakistani, and Iranian women are represented—witnessed, recorded, framed, and reframed within different mediums and from different ideological perspectives—this book is not only concerned with the value of the model of remediated witnessing as a deconstructive tool, but also its reconstructive potential.

The ‘War on Terror’: Geographies, Histories, and Ideologies

This book focuses on the representational politics of Muslim women and considers how they are framed both by Western neo-imperialism and within the specific cultural and political paradigms of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. Charting the geographical parameters for this book, I situate the particular countries under consideration here within the ‘broad horizon’ of the modern Middle East, as it is defined in the introduction to Reza Aslan’s anthology Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East (2011: xxi). Aslan’s description of this composite geographic field ‘from Morocco to Iran, Turkey to Pakistan’ takes note of how the many countries within this broad region ‘speak different languages, practice different faiths, [and] possess different cultures’ (2011: xxi). It is neither Aslan’s intention nor mine to conflate these countries with one another—they each have their own distinct politics and traditions. I do, however, find it occasionally useful to gesture to particular events or contexts in the broader region of the modern Middle East in order to elucidate my discussion on Afghan, Pakistani, and Iranian women. What many of the countries in this eclectic region do share is, as Aslan describes it, ‘a common experience of Western imperialism and colonial domination’ (2011: xxi). My focus predominantly falls on how the ‘War on Terror’, following the events of 11 September 2001, has come to shape political and cultural discourse about this region. It is important, however, to recognise how current affairs are borne from historical colonial violence. Throughout the book, I emphasise the importance of historicisation and how a failure to historicise limits the frames within which we can construe meaning and gain understanding. In what follows, I seek to contextualise—and historicise—how Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran have become implicated within the discourse of the ‘War on Terror’.²

Edward W. Said criticises how, in the years that followed the terrorist attacks by al Qaeda on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, ‘the images and process by which the media has delivered Islam for consideration to the Western consumer of news perpetrates hostility and ignorance’ (1997: xlviii). Since 11 September 2001, Muslim identity and culture has often been subject to narrow-minded stereotyping in Western political and media rhetoric. Esra Mirze Santesso takes care to point out that ‘the term “Muslim” itself does not denote a monolithic consciousness but rather an assemblage of ethnicities, nationalities and cultural heritages’ (2013: 3). To identify as Muslim, whether in religious or secular terms, offers up different means of belonging—to faith, to family, to tradition, and/or to nation. And yet, in twenty-first-century Western discourses, Islam has become delimited, an ideological construct wherein ‘[t]he framing of Muslims amounts to a refraction, not a reflection of reality’ (Morey and Yaqin 2011: 3–4). Conversely, as Peter Morey and Amina Yaqin describe, ‘at the same time that “Islam” and “Muslim” are narrowed to mean all that is threatening and foreign, “American,” “British,” and “Western” swell to operate as what semiotics would term “flowing signifiers”’ (2011: 36). Such distinctions, Morey and Yaqin argue, ‘are always highly ideological’ (2011: 36). In reading how Afghan, Pakistani, and Iranian women are stereotyped or framed—often, although not exclusively, as Muslim—within Western political and media rhetoric, it is equally important to recognise the categorisation of ‘Western’ as a similar conflation of geographical and ideological signifiers.

Focusing on the (re)framing of Afghan, Pakistani, and Iranian women across a range of literary, visual, and digital media, this book necessarily and unavoidably works within the same categorisations and stereotypes it seeks to challenge and disassemble. As Morey and Yaqin describe, ‘while recognizing the insidiousness of negative, prejudiced stereotyping, we also need to acknowledge stereotyping as necessary to meaning, to making sense of the world’ (2011: 30–1). The book’s critical methodology—which utilises the model of remediated witnessing—considers the various material and ideological frameworks via which we ‘make sense of the world’ and assesses the ways in which they collide with one another. Extending beyond the recognition and critique of stereotyping and appropriation, the book asks what new meanings, which confront, resist, and fracture, might emerge when information is exposed to consecutive readings and viewings and then (re)distributed within different contexts. What happens when we cut through hegemonic categories, stereotypes, and frameworks? What kinds of new spaces are created?

The term ‘War on Terror’ was first used by US President George W. Bush (2001–9) in an address given to Congress on 20 September 2001: ‘Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated’ (‘Transcript of President Bush’s address’ 21 September 2001). Shortly after, on 7 October 2001, the US declared war on Afghanistan, beginning with a series of airstrikes which targeted military assets controlled by the Taliban and camps where it was believed al Qaeda terrorists had been trained. This supposed beginning to the ‘War on Terror’, however, does not appear out of a vacuum. Here, I spend a little time briefly charting—and historicising—the pr...