Battling Binaries: The Psychosocial Endurance of Gender Constructs in West Asian War Fiction

Authors

  • Manisha Bhadran

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53007/SJGC.2024.V9.I1.207

Keywords:

War, Gender, Civilian / Combatant, Home / Front, West Asia

Abstract

The archetypes of the heroic soldier and the caring mother, which dominate the social imaginary of war, reflect the essentially  gendered nature of war discourse. However, violent masculinity and gentle femininity, though essential to the war discourse, are not biological qualities but cultural constructions. The hegemonic “war story,” as Miriam Cooke refers to it, is built on these binaries of masculinity/femininity, civilian/combatant, home/front, etc. However, in postcolonial wars, these binaries are complicated by both the inclusion of women as combatants and the technological advancements that enable the pervasion of war into homes, endangering civilians just as much as combatants. In this article, I will examine how select contemporary West Asian fictional narratives depict the war experience of gendered subjects in occupied or war-torn territories like Iraq and Palestine. Exploring these texts in the light of war studies conducted by Miriam Cooke and Joshua S. Goldstein reveals that, despite the changing face of the new wars and the subversion  of gender binaries, psycho-social impacts of conventional gender roles persist. Men depicted in the selected fictional texts continue to bear the pressure to protect and to resist violence using violence. Women’s changing roles in the new wars expose them to similar violence as combatants, but the lack of social recognition metes out a double jeopardy, whereby they are survivors of war’s violence yet are denied the honour or aftercare received by male combatants of war.

Author Biography

Manisha Bhadran

Manisha Bhadran is a Ph.D. student at the Department of English, University of Hyderabad, studying human rights questions in contemporary West Asian war fiction. Previously, she worked as Assistant Professor of English at Rajagiri School of Engineering and Technology, Kochi. She completed her postgraduate studies at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, and also earned an MPhil for her research on gendered bodies and the Indian Penal Code. She has presented her research findings at institutes of international repute including the University of Oxford and the University of George Washington. Her research interests include women’s studies, human rights, and Indian criminal law.

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Published

2024-07-14

How to Cite

Manisha Bhadran. “Battling Binaries: The Psychosocial Endurance of Gender Constructs in West Asian War Fiction”. Samyukta: A Journal of Gender and Culture, vol. 9, no. 1, July 2024, doi:10.53007/SJGC.2024.V9.I1.207.

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Section

Articles