Human/Nature Dualism in Khan’s The Geometry of God: An Eco-feminist Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55737/qjssh.167970333Keywords:
Environment, Identity, Brown Woman, Human/Nature DualismAbstract
This research proposes a comparative eco-feminist approach to challenge corporate narratives regarding women's associations with nature. The analysis is centred on Uzma Aslam Khan's (2008) novel, The Geometry of God, aiming to gain insights into Val Plumwood's (2002) contemporary critique of the ‘human/ nature dualism’. This research argues social constructivism and socialist eco-feminism to explore the differences in how language is employed to understand the eco-feminist assumptions concerning women and their relationship with nature. Eco-feminism, a movement that emerged in the 1990s, posits that the domination and degradation of women and the environment are the results of patriarchal and capitalist systems (Molyneux et al., 1995). This research argues the compelling issues concerning corporate representations and misrepresentations of women and their connections to their surrounding environment. The portrayals of the relationship between brown women and nature highlight the discursive reconfiguration of brown women's identity, examining how female novelists in Pakistani patriarchal societies redefine the narratives that deconstruct the eternal images of women imposed by the patriarchal academia (Mehmood, 2019).
References
Beder, J. S. (2001). Eco-feminism and globalisation: A critical appraisal. Democracy & Nature, 7(2), 281-302. https://doi.org/10.1080/10855660124616
Dobscha, S. (1993). Women and the Environment: Applying EcoFeminism to Environmentally-Related Consumption. Advances in Consumer Research, 20(1), 36–40. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=340906
Gaard, G. (2011). Eco-feminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-Placing Species in a Material Feminist Environmentalism. Feminist Formations, 23(2), 26–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41301655
Gellner, E. (1975). Cohesion and Identity: the Maghreb from Ibn Khaldun to Emile Durkheim. Government and Opposition, 10(2), 203–218. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44482090
Haraway, D. (2013). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203873106
Hawkins, R. Z. (1998). Eco-feminism and Non-humans: Continuity, Difference, Dualism, and Domination. Hypatia, 13(1), 158–197. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810611
Khan, U. A. (2013). The geometry of god. Haus Pub. https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2010.0201
Mehmood, S. (2019). Voicing the silences: Women in contemporary Pakistani fiction in English. Pakistan Journal of Gender Studies, 18(1), 113-128. https://doi.org/10.46568/pjgs.v18i1.28
Molyneux, M., & Steinberg, D. L. (1995). Mies and Shiva’s “Eco-feminism”: A New Testament? [Review of Eco-feminism, by M. Mies & V. Shiva]. Feminist Review, 49, 86–107. https://doi.org/10.2307/1395330
Njibwakale, S. W. (2019). Gender-based violence. Religion in Gender-Based Violence, Immigration, and Human Rights, 157-175. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429487231-9
Obiora, L. A. (1997). Feminism, Globalisation, and Culture: After Beijing. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 4(2), 355–406. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20644657
Oloka-Onyango, J., & Tamale, S. (1995). “The Personal Is Political,” or Why Women’s Rights Are Indeed Human Rights: An African Perspective on International Feminism. Human Rights Quarterly, 17(4), 691–731. http://www.jstor.org/stable/762486
Plumwood, V. (2002). Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203006757
Salleh, A. (2003). Eco-feminism as sociology. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 14(1), 61–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455750308565514
Walker, A. J. (2009). A feminist critique of family studies. Handbook of Feminist Family Studies, 18-27. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412982801.n2
