Post Postcolonial Subaltern: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of Transgender Identity in Faiqa Mansab’s This House of Clay and Water (2017)

Abstract

This study aims to explore the Transgender identity in the novel of Faiqa Mansab. This research will focus on diverse aspects of Transgender characters explored with a postcolonial lens and FDA methodology in the novel, This House of Clay and Water (2017). A transgender named Bhanggi, is the primary character to be explored and analyzed in retrospect. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the animosities of colonial legacy and different manifestations of discrimination against Transgenders in Heteronormative Pakistani society. This has left an impact on the presentation of this specific social class. The primary purpose is to investigate how and why transgenders are socially shunned individuals in South Asia in general and Pakistan in particular. This research would reconstruct and reconfigure transgender subjectivities to explore the causes of how transgenders are a ‘Subaltern’ and voiceless in the post postcolonial context. The research illustrates how contemporary socio-political issues of Pakistani society are connected to their colonial past. So, in this Post post-colonial perspective, transgenders are the new Subaltern of the 21^st century. In this quagmire of present and past dilemmatic scenarios, the characters from a voiceless community such as transgenders suffer. In this discussion, an in-depth textual analysis of primary texts has been conducted to interpret the elements of Postcolonialism, Subaltern, and gendered identities.