WHEN THE SUBALTERN WRITES HERSELF: FEMINIST RESISTANCE AND RECLAIMED DESIRE IN FILM ‘KAMLI’

Abstract

The film Kamli (2022) presents a rich tapestry of female experience within restrictive paradigms of cultural patriarchy in Pakistan. This paper utilizes Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” and Helene Cixous’s “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1976) as theoretical frameworks to analyze how Kamli (2022) challenges traditional constructs surrounding female sexuality, agency, and desire. Through a textual and dialogic analysis of the film’s narrative and cinematic language, this study examines how the protagonist, Hina, emerges from a state of voicelessness to articulate her embodied subjectivity. The paper examines the linguistic repertoire of the film and also looks into the extralinguistic features as tools of resistance and emancipation within a sociocultural setting that suppresses women’s voices and desires. The convergence of postcolonial critique and French feminist theory sheds light on the intersections of gender, voice, and subalternity in the contemporary Pakistani cinema.