Postcolonial Contexts and Gynotexts: A Comparative Study of Selected African and Pakistani Anglophone Novels

Abstract

Situating the argument within the postcolonial theoretical perspectives on agency, nationalist zeal, and subalternity, the article attempts a comparative analysis of two of the Anglophone novels produced in the former colonies: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) and Mumtaz Shah Nawaz’s The Heart Divided (1957). Adichie’s is an African narrative of the post-independence predicament and Shah Nawaz’s covers the culminating point of the collapse of the Raj from the Pakistani perspective. Gayatri Spivak (1988) and Elleke Boehmer’s (2005) insights regarding the sociocultural and political perplexities associated with the conditions of subalternity, agency, and nationality have been used as the theoretical position for approaching the texts. The selected fictional narratives have been analyzed to unpack the textual currents manifesting the social problems, cultural tensions, gendered dimensions, and collective crises therein. The article explains how the novelists have thematized several issues responsible for creation of the crisis, especially for women, in the postcolonial Nigerian and Pakistani societies: colonial influence, social disintegration, economic uncertainties, patriarchal structure, linguistic disorientation, and sexual exploitation. All these unsettling factors depicted in the novels have been negotiated and explained. It is also discussed how the novels have taken up the theme of female agency by portraying resilient characters who struggle to compete with the coercive system. With its focus on the prevalent sociocultural problems found in the former colonies in the African and Asian regions, the study contributes to understanding of the colonial conditions and legacies.