VOICING THE VOICELESS: ECO-FEMINIST DISCOURSE AND THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN AND NATURE IN PAKISTANI ANGLOPHONE FICTION

Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate the exploitation of women and the natural environment in two prominent pieces of Pakistani Anglophone fiction: The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali (2019) by Uzma Aslam Khan and The Runaways (2018) by Fatima Bhutto. Using the ecofeminist theory proposed by Vandana Shiva (1988), and the three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) developed by Norman Fairclough (1992), the study analyzes the ways in which the novels employ metaphor, patterns of transitivity, euphemisms and silence of voices to portray women and nature as both victimized and controlled by the colonial, patriarchal and capitalist systems. The study works with a qualitative and interpretive method, examining selected excerpts from both novels under four categories: silencing and erasure of women's and ecological voice, language of exploitation and maldevelopment, representation of women's bodies and natural landscapes as parallel sites of oppression and forms of resistance and ecological agency. As can be seen from the comparison, oth novels have a similar ideological argument, even though the setting is different colonial South Asia in the 1940s, and contemporary urban Karachi. Both texts imply that the oppression of women and the degradation of the natural environment are not only parallel in context, but also structurally parallel in the way they are produced, maintained and organized in similar systems and processes. The findings reveal that the study makes a substantial contribution to the field of ecofeminist literary studies, the use of CDA in literary analysis and critique of Pakistani Anglophone fiction.