Exploring Subaltern Voices: A Postcolonial Study of Daniyal Mueenuddin’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Abstract

This paper examines how subaltern voice has been represented through the perspective of a postcolonial reading in In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin. Using the theoretical ideas of the subaltern as developed by Gayatri Spivak and slight variations of hybridity and mimicry as developed by Homi Bhabha, the research study focuses on how the marginalized and voiceless, primarily women, servants, and rural workers transverse the socio-political dimensions of postcolonial Pakistan. The collection of short stories is the selection of fragmentary but touching peeps into the lives of those who passed between tradition and modernity, fortune and poverty. Capturing the strain of agency by characters in established layers of classes and feudal societies, the paper shows the way in which postcolonial literature is able to reclaim missing voices. The subtlety of the character shown by Mueenuddin serves to defy denunciative discourses and to indicate the overlay of colonial legacies in the current Pakistani culture. The present research can be seen to contribute to the study of postcolonialism because of its focus on the multidimensionality of subaltern life and the necessity to refocus literary discourse on periphery voices.