RE-ORIENTALISM AND THE EXOTICIZATION OF PAKISTANI CULTURE: A CRITICAL STUDY OF QAISRA SHAHRAZ’S SHORT STORIES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62533/fh303x57Keywords:
re-orientalism, Qaisra Shahraz, exoticism, diasporic literature, orientalist tropes, postcolonial studiesAbstract
This paper attempted to uncover the ways in which Pakistani diasporic writers with special reference to Shahraz’s short stories represent the Pakistani people and their culture. This research article investigates Qaisra Shahraz’s representations of Pakistani culture and gender through orientalist motifs in the selected short stories: A Pair of Jeans, Perchanvah, The Discovery, and The Elopement. Employing Lau’s (2009) theory of re-orientalism, the study explores the dual positionality of Shahraz as both insider and outsider, and how this duality informs her portrayal of a patriarchal, superstitious, and culturally regressive Pakistan in contrast to an idealized West associated with individual freedom, rationality, and modernity. The analysis reveals how Shahraz’s narratives reproduce orientalist binaries that align with global market demands for cultural otherness. Through McKee’s textual analysis, this article focuses on the ethical complexities of the diasporic representation and questions the potential of literary self-orientalization in Anglophone Pakistani fiction with reference to Shahraz’s short stories. In addition to the growing literature on re-orientalism, the paper is a contribution to the politics of cultural translation, authenticity, and narrator voice in postcolonial South Asian literature.
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