Religious Marginalization/ Othering of Pakistani Women in Islamabad Blues by Ladurner

Abstract

The aim of this qualitative research is to investigate the religious marginalization/othering of Pakistani women in the memoir Islamabad Blues (2004) by Ladurner. This research introspects Pakistani women’s oppression and marginalization as others by Eastern patriarchal system and Western imperialistic perspective in the selected text. The epistemology for this research is postcolonial feminism. The selected theoretical framework is Mohanty’s Under Western Eyes (1984) and Said’s notion of othering from Orientalism (1978). Textual analysis is selected as a method of analysis with a focus on the most likely interpretations of the text. According to McKee’s Textual Analysis (2003), every text should focus on ‘contextualization’. Without taking into account the exact socio-cultural context, one cannot assert one’s own self as right/superior and the other as wrong/inferior in a text. McKee’s contextualization works as a lens to highlight that the Eastern context of culture and religious teachings are not taken into account while constructing Eastern women’s identity in the selected text ultimately marginalizing them on the basis of religion.