The Politics of Voice in the Stereotypical Representation of the Pashtun: A Critical Study of Khaled Hosseini’s Novels
Journal Title: Global Social Sciences Review - Year 2018, Vol 3, Issue 2
Abstract
The current study is an attempt to critically analyze the role and politics of voice in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns in terms of categorical and stereotypical representation of the Pashtuns. It is a critical discourse study (Norman Fairclough, 1989, 2018) of the selected data. Moreover, the data is viewed from the perspective of critical discourse studies. The novels under study are polyphonic in nature, and the characters belong to various Afghan ethnic backgrounds, like the Pashtuns, the Tajiks and the Hazaras. The study concludes that the novelist's choice of the characters with their respective voices and the roles assigned to them are political, ideological and somewhat biased. The Pashtuns have been stereotypically represented by categorizing them as the social, well-educated and more or less liberal Pashtuns, the tribal and traditionalist Pashtuns, extremist and fundamentalist Pashtuns, like Taliban. Misrepresentation of the tribal and fundamentalist Pashtuns as racists, ethnic nationalists, ideologists, sexists, exclusionists, traditionalists and power-abusers is indicative of the novelist's biasedness and exaggeration.
Authors and Affiliations
Rab Nawaz Khan, Abdul Waheed Qureshi
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP606116
- DOI 10.31703/gssr.2018(III-II).22
- Views 95
- Downloads 0
A Voyage of Esprit-De-Corps: A Sectorial Comparison
Esprit-De-Corps encompasses cohesion, loyalty and unity within an organization. The study is focused on the existing threads of EspritDe-Corps and its comparison in public and private sector universities. A sample of 533...
Prospects of Federalism in Pakistan
Federalism is created by a state having heterogeneous population with a desire to have provisions for adequate distribution of economic resources within a democratic form of government. The economic interaction is usuall...
Pakistani Firms' Efficiency: An Empirical Study of Pakistan Stock Exchange through Data Envelopment Analysis
This paper investigates listed firm efficiency on Pakistan Stock Exchange by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The reason for application and calculation of the DEA score is to know how much the firms are efficient...
The Myth of Downside Risk Based Capital Asset Pricing Model: Empirical Evidence from South Asian Countries
The study aims to empirically investigate the applicability of the downside risk based Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) for four south Asian countries e.g. Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Fama-MacBeth method...
Effects of Integrated lessons on Learning Urdu Language Skill of Students at Primary Level
The study explores the effectiveness of integrated and traditional instruction method in developing reading and writing skills in Urdu language at primary level. As an experimental study it used Pretest, post-test and co...