ABSTRACT
The introduction sets out the central aims of the book: to introduce the conceptual model of remediated witnessing and to critically examine the representational politics of women in post-millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran across a range of literary, visual, and digital media. Laying the groundwork for future chapters, the introduction provides an overview of the geographical, historical, and ideological contexts which underscore the discourse of the ‘War on Terror’ and the ways in which Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran have been implicated within this neo-imperial narrative. The introduction then accounts for how the research undertaken in this book is informed by praxes and discourses that underpin postcolonial feminist dialogues. Elaborating on theoretical and conceptual notions of ‘resistance’, ‘(re)mediation’, and ‘relationality’, the introduction sets out to argue that the model of remediated witnessing, which here analyses the ways in which Muslim women are framed by particular stereotypes and tropes, represents an effective way to challenge categories, even while working within them. The model of remediated witnessing draws attention to what constitutes a particular material or ideological frame, via which meaning and identities are fixed into place, and, in so doing, presents the opportunity to not only deconstruct meaning, but also reconstruct it.
