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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.
List of contents
Introduction: (Re)Framing Women in Post-Millennial Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran ? Part I: The 'War on Terror' and Muslim Women: Subalternity and the Subject-Agent Chapter One: A Model of Remediated Witnessing: Theoretical and Affective Frameworks Chapter Two: Subalternity and the 'War on Terror': Configuring Agential and Subject(ed) Identities Chapter Three: Cover Girls: Sharbat Gula, Aisha Mohammadzai, and Malala Yousafzai ? Part II: Resistant Subjectivities: Dissidence, Martyrdom, and Mourning Chapter Four: Mothers of Martyrs: Grievability and Brokenness in the Iranian Graphic Novel Chapter Five: Over My Dead Body: Female Dissidence, Corporeal Testimony, and Fatal Agency Chapter Six: Literary, Visual, and Digital Afterlives: The Ethics of Exposure ? Postscript: Out of Frame
About the author
Rachel Gregory Fox is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Kent whose research project focuses on migration, the UK’s Hostile Environment, and the ethics of storytelling.
Summary
This book critically examines the representational politics of women in post-millennial Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, across a range of literary, visual, and digital media.
Report
"Remediated Witnessing explores the reframing of the witnessed event in visual culture, fiction, and digital media. In the book, Rachel Gregory Fox showcases her exceptionally strong theoretical and interdisciplinary research into literary and cultural studies. Her emphasis on counter-stereotypical depictions of and by women from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran from 2000 to the present has an urgent decolonising agenda. Intersectionality as a lens is also crucial to Gregory Fox, and she persuasively shows the theory's shifting parameters and ongoing relevance. Remediated Witnessing is therefore complex work, designed not just to make you think but to inspire action."
Claire Chambers, Professor of Global Literature, University of York
"Could there be a timelier book than Remediated Witnessing? It asks us to look carefully at how we view the experience of women in contemporary Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran and offers a complex account of how the experience of 'Muslim' women has been shaped. Gregory Fox calls for better, more honest witnessing that can soften our perspective and allow us to locate resistance in the most elusive of spaces."
Anastasia Valassopoulos, Senior Lecturer in World Literatures, University of Manchester
