Exploration of Postcolonial Subaltern World in the Literary Works of Maya Angelou and Mukhtar Mai

Abstract

Literature is substantially influenced by ancient and modern theories of literary discourse from the age of Plato and Aristotle, all such theories have played an important role to challenge the set conventions and rules of literature; a major transition is underway in literary discourse. After the emergence of modern and postmodern literary theory, the themes and trends of literary studies havechallenged by number of emerging theories. The result of this changing trend in is in the form of romanticism, feminism, impressionism, imagism, existentialism, structuralism, modernism, postmodernism, and even post-structuralism. To challenge the historiography of postcolonial studies there emerged another branch of study known as subaltern studies. The writers have exposed oppression at the societal, religious and gender levels. It is found that there is an intense period of disillusionment in the history of marginalized women and their representation in the form of writings. They register their protest and resist whatever is detrimental to their quest of identity and self-worth. Literary exploration of self and other is an attempt to give voice to the unvoiced, on the untrodden paths, to investigate the uninvestigated. It is an enterprise to retrieve the void, and the silences in the text mediated, twice through trans-literation and transition. In this research paper an attempt has been made to understand the conditions of women in African American and Pakistani Tribal societies. The two life writings, one of Maya Angelou I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings and the other In the Name Honor by Mukhtar Mai are used to examine their situations in their respective societies under Subaltern perspective.

Keywords

• subaltern world
• postmodernism
• postcolonial