ABSTRACT

This book critically examines the representational politics of women in post-millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran across a range of literary, visual, and digital media. Introducing the conceptual model of remediated witnessing, the book contemplates the ways in which meaning is constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed as a consequence of its (re)production and (re)distribution. In what ways is information re framed? The chapters in this book therefore analyse the reiterative processes via which Afghan, Pakistani, and Iranian women are represented in a range of contemporary media. By considering how Muslim women have been exploited as part of neo-imperial, state, and patriarchal discourses, the book charts possible—and unexpected—routes via which Muslim women might enact resistance. What is more, it asks the reader to consider how they, themselves, embody the role of witness to these resistant subjectivities, and how they might do so responsibly, with empathy and accountability.

chapter |19 pages

Introduction

(Re)Framing Women in Post-Millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran

part I|72 pages

The ‘War on Terror’ and Muslim Women

chapter 1|21 pages

A Model of Remediated Witnessing

Theoretical and Affective Frameworks

chapter 2|23 pages

Subalternity and the ‘War on Terror’

Configuring Agential and Subject(ed) Identities

chapter 3|26 pages

Cover Girls

Sharbat Gula, Aisha Mohammadzai, and Malala Yousafzai

part II|83 pages

Resistant Subjectivities

chapter 4|28 pages

Mothers of Martyrs

Grievability and Brokenness in the Iranian Graphic Novel

chapter 5|23 pages

Over My Dead Body

Female Dissidence, Corporeal Testimony, and Fatal Agency

chapter 6|28 pages

Literary, Visual, and Digital Afterlives

The Ethics of Exposure

chapter |2 pages

Postscript

Out of Frame