(Re)Framing Women in Post-Millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran: Remediated Witnessing in Literary, Visual, and Digital Media

213 Pages·2022·4.517 MB·English

by  Rachel Gregory Fox

“(Re)Framing Women in Post-Millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and
Iran explores the reframing of the witnessed event in visual culture, fc-
tion, and digital media. In the book, Rachel Gregory Fox showcases her
exceptionally strong theoretical and interdisciplinary research into liter-
ary and cultural studies. Her emphasis on counter- stereotypical depic-
tions of and by women from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran from 2000
to the present has an urgent decolonising agenda. Intersectionality as a
lens is also crucial to Gregory Fox, and she p ersuasively shows the the-
ory’s shifting parameters and ongoing relevance. (Re)Framing Women
in Post-Millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran is therefore complex
work, designed not just to make you think but to inspire action.”
Claire Chambers, Professor of Global Literature,
University of York, UK
“Could there be a timelier book than (Re)Framing Women in Post-
Millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran? It asks us to look carefully
at how we view the experience of women in contemporary Afghanistan,
Pakistan, and Iran and offers a complex account of how the experience
of ‘Muslim’ women has been shaped. Gregory Fox calls for better, more
honest witnessing that can soften our perspective and allow us to locate
resistance in the most elusive of spaces.”
Anastasia Valassopoulos, Senior Lecturer in World
Literatures, University of Manchester, UK

(Re)Framing Women in
Post-Millennial Afghanistan,
Pakistan, and Iran
This book critically examines the representational politics of women in
post-millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran across a range of liter-
ary, 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)distri-
bution. In what ways is information reframed?
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 con-
sider how they, themselves, embody the role of witness to these resistant
subjectivities, and how they might do so responsibly, with empathy and
accountability.
Rachel Gregory Fox is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Uni-
versity of Kent whose research project focuses on migration, the UK’s
Hostile Environment, and the ethics of storytelling.
Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures
Edited in collaboration with the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial
Studies, University of Kent at Canterbury, this series presents a wide
range of research into postcolonial literatures by specialists in the feld.
Volumes will concentrate on writers and writing originating in pre-
viously (or presently) colonized areas, and will include material from
non-anglophone as well as anglophone colonies and literatures. Series
editors: Donna Landry and Caroline Rooney
On Literary Attachment in South Africa
Tough Love
Michael Chapman
Narrating Violence in the Postcolonial World
Edited by Rebecca Romdhani and Daria Tunca
Poetics and Politics of Relationality in Contemporary
Australian Aboriginal Fiction
Dorothee Klein
(Re)Framing Women in Post-Millennial Afghanistan,
Pakistan, and Iran
Remediated Witnessing in Literary, Visual, and Digital Media
Rachel Gregory Fox
The Postcolonial Indian City
Literature, Policy, Politics and Evolution
Dibyakusum Ray
For more information on this series, please visit https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Research-in-Postcolonial-Literatures/book-series/
SE0404
(Re)Framing Women in
Post-Millennial Afghanistan,
Pakistan, and Iran
Remediated Witnessing in Literary,
Visual, and Digital Media
Rachel Gregory Fox
First published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Rachel Gregory Fox
The right of Rachel Gregory Fox to be identifed as author of
this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-45973-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-21802-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-27007-2 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003270072
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For Alan
For all the words we share

Contents
List of Figures xi
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction: (Re)Framing Women in
Post-Millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran 1
PART I
The ‘War on Terror’ and Muslim Women:
Subalternity and the Subject-Agent 21
1 A Model of Remediated Witnessing:
Theoretical and Affective Frameworks 23
2 Subalternity and the ‘War on Terror’:
Confguring Agential and Subject(ed) Identities 44
3 Cover Girls: Sharbat Gula, Aisha Mohammadzai,
and Malala Yousafzai 67
PART II
Resistant Subjectivities: Dissidence, Martyrdom,
and Mourning 93
4 Mothers of Martyrs: Grievability and Brokenness
in the Iranian Graphic Novel 95
5 Over My Dead Body: Female Dissidence,
Corporeal Testimony, and Fatal Agency 123