Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism - (Expanding Frontiers: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studies) by Shazia Rahman (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism provides a nuanced analysis of Pakistani women's lives, particularly in terms of how they engage with the environment, through readings of their literary and cinematic fictions. Shazia Rahman demonstrates the ways in which these women explore alternative, environmental means of belonging, examines the vitality of place-based identities within Pakistani culture, and, as such, contributes to evolving understandings of Pakistani women--both in relation to their environment as well as to various discourses of nation and patriarchy.

Deploying a postcolonial, ecofeminist approach, Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism allows theories of space and place-based identities to supply a framework for exploring everyday practices represented within Pakistani women's film and literature--the material reality of how people live among each other, deal with their environment, and intuit their relationship with the spiritual. By analyzing the cinematic and literary fictions that portray Pakistani women's engagements with the more-than-human environment, Rahman explains how nationalist and religious identifications exist simultaneously with less visible narratives of belonging, thereby enriching the understanding of the ways Pakistani women explore alternative, environmental ways of inclusion in order to counter dominant discourses of religious nationalism and global Islam.

Review Quotes

"[Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism] offers much to think about and discuss, including a greater engagement with social and ecological issues so important to Pakistan's development and climate change."--Muneeza Shamsie, Dawn-- (4/24/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"Boldly focusing on eco-cosmopolitanism, vernacular and official landscapes, animalization, and bioregionalism, Rahman highlights the tensions between ecocriticism and feminism that have produced a vulnerable position for ecofeminism. The author's new perspective on postcolonial Pakistani studies is welcome."--M. Roy, Choice-- (4/1/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism fills an important gap in scholarship in not only Pakistani Literatures specifically, but South Asian Studies in general. It also significantly extends the scope of both feminist and ecocritical scholarship, offering an alternative vision of empowerment for women and the subdominant sections of society that eschews two competing, hegemonic, and limiting, frameworks based on religious nationalism and US imperialism. . . . This pioneering approach from an ecofeminist perspective is sure to pave the way for more such explorations."--Chitra Sankaran, ISLE-- (5/25/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"As a welcome infusion of a new and urgent critical voice into Pakistani literary criticism, Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism makes its most significant contribution to ecocriticism through its focus on the environments of Pakistan."--Cara Cilano, Bloomsbury Pakistan-- (2/7/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"By foregrounding attachments to Pakistan as a place--comprising land, sea, plants, and animals--Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism probes the important but overlooked relationship between women and the environment through a critical analysis of patriarchal structures of land ownership and social control that underpin the political and moral economy of Pakistan. Reading novels and feature films against the grain from an ecological perspective reveals the myriad ways of environmental belonging experienced by women at key moments in Pakistan's history. Innovative in its use of methodologies in environmental humanities and postcolonial analysis, Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism is a welcome intervention to the incipient debate on women and ecological degradation in Pakistan and will enrich understandings of self, place, and belonging beyond the narrow confines of the postcolonial state's official nationalism."--Ayesha Jalal, Mary Richardson Professor of History and director of the Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies at Tufts University
-- (9/14/2018 12:00:00 AM)

"Shazia Rahman brings a fine literary critical sensibility to a postcolonial, ecofeminist reading of contemporary Pakistani novels and films. Her ethically charged book offers a fresh . . . engagement with cultural production from Pakistan, an enormously important part of South Asia that is nevertheless often neglected in postcolonial studies."--Ananya Jahanara Kabir, author of Partition's Post-Amnesias: 1947, 1971, and Modern South Asia-- (9/21/2018 12:00:00 AM)

"Shazia Rahman constructively redirects much current scholarship on Pakistani literature and film. Her focus on women's narratives, understood broadly, and the environment is not only timely in terms of scholarly trends but also necessary, given the increasingly stark risks Pakistanis and others around the world face due to environmental neglect and degradation."--Cara Cilano, professor of English at Michigan State University-- (9/14/2018 12:00:00 AM)

"This book addresses the silence in the environmental humanities and in the academy regarding Pakistani women's literary and cinematic fictions. Rahman conducts a nuanced analysis of Pakistani women's lives, particularly in terms of how they engage with land, animals, ecology, and sense of place. She delves into the ways that Pakistani literature and cinema are revealing alternative, environmental ways of belonging that women create to counter dominant discourses of religious nationalism and global Islam. This book will be required reading not only among ecocritics, but among feminist, postcolonial, ethnic, Pakistani, and American studies scholars as well."--Joni Adamson, professor of English and director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University-- (9/14/2018 12:00:00 AM)

"This is an urgent and consequential book on the deep entanglements between gender politics and environmental justice. Shazia Rahman brings into conversation for the first time an impressive array of ecological thought leaders and Pakistani writers and film makers. Impressive, vital work."--Rob Nixon, author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor-- (11/19/2018 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Shazia Rahman is an associate professor of English at the University of Dayton.