هدی شبرنگ

In the immigration studies, the diasporic female experiences are not indicatively considered as the prevailing experiences of immigrant men who are claimed to stand for all immigrants. Thus, it is challenging to examine female migration experiences and the consequences that are ignored. This article explores the ignored parts of female migration experiences as subalterns and focuses on the process of assimilation in the host country following theories of Gayatri Spivak’s post-colonialism. In the age of migration the female characters of the former colonies are being culturally hybridized when they get in touch with the Western factors. That hybridity and their ambivalent attitude between the cultures, they are becoming the mimic women that has not only affected them and led them to identity crisis but also contributed to the dangling of them between cultures lost and confused. This article will carefully examine the consequences of assimilation of the female character, Mumtaz, in Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke in the hybridized atmosphere. Moth Smoke is the debut novel by British Pakistani novelist, Mohsin Hamid, which provides the context for the clash of cultures in its portrait of a country violently divided against itself. Sometimes, assimilation with host cultures are to the extent that the female immigrant becomes baffled and confounded. With shattered identity, she is neither a modern Westernized woman nor an Eastern glorified mother and wife.

The precedence of poetry can be traced to ancient times when man first realized that he could combine speech with rhythmicity and musicality to convey and express his inner-most thoughts and passions. The strengths and advantages attributed to poetry are galore; however, few think of employing it as a source for retrieving cultural facts. In the current study, the endeavor of the researcher is to display how poetry can be utilized to extract cultural concepts which are embedded in the mass cultural consciousness of a people by scrutinizing their poetry. The complexity of notions, expressed through poetry, can be revealed one’s verses are deconstructed and the poem is perused scholarly to single out hypograms which are the units carrying the essence of meaning. The inevitable result would be the revelation of different layers of meaning which are convoluted into leitmotifs and only a thorough analysis and meticulous reading can exhibit the relationship between signs, signifier and the signified. As both poetry and cultural studies share the characteristic of being implicit, it is necessary to employ methods which aid clarity and lucidity. A sophisticated analysis requires the use of thick description, a method which cleaves the kernels of thought to display intended meaning and acts as a viable catalyst expediting the process of comprehension through interpretation.

This article aims to analyze Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy (1993) in light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. The present study explores the significance of dialogism in the given novel which tells the story of a marginalized young boy living in neo-colonized Ireland in the 1960s. Bakhtin believes that the development of signification between the “self” and the “other” is called dialogue through which human beings define their existence as individuals in polyphonic societies. The protagonist of The Butcher Boy is a non-conformist, unwilling to follow social rules. He creates his very own way of dialogism with his surroundings and ends up in a mental hospital and finally a prison, showing the author’s approval of Bakhtin’s viewpoint towards the importance of dialogue in shaping human beings’ consciousness and existence in the world. Moreover, this article attempts to clarify the resistance of the main character before his society’s hierarchical structure that makes him a perfect example of a marginalized hero disobeying rules and regulations imposed by the authorities to gain an independent resolution.