• Munazzah Rabbani

  Author

• Sundus Javaid

  Author

The recuperative paradigm has acquired tremendous significance in recent times to comprehend the sameness-alterity debate raging fiercely in feminist circles due to the advent of Postcolonialism. Feminism, with its characteristic emphasis on unearthing/recuperating the unnatural silences of women, hinges on the question whose
voice will be recuperated by whom because the Postcolonial studies have shattered the white feminism’s myth of homogenous, unified sisterly groups across cultures. But the Postcolonial emphasis on difference also needs to acknowledge and assimilate the differences that exist within same cultural community of ‘homogenous’ sisters as well. For this purpose, this study explores Sidhwa’s presentation of ‘others’ in her work “Water” who, ironically, exist, not on the other side of racial/cultural/gender binary, rather the ‘others’ who belong to the same race, the same sisterly group. Thus Sidhwa appropriates and, eventually, deconstructs the Western feminism’s notion of Gynocriticism that privileges the realm of maternal as opposed to the paternal realm and Rymond’s (2001) notion of “Gyn/affection” which is premised upon universal sisterly notions of ethic of care and empowerment. Sidhwa, for this purpose, inculcates the emotion of envy into Postcolonial feminism’s discourses. The sisterly, feminist
recuperative myth that only women can and do recuperate each other’s voice stands exposed when it is intersected with the Postcolonial notion of ‘others’ who exist within the same community/gender/race. Thus Sidhwa diverges from the Western hegemonic notion of universal sisterhood and propounds/constructs her own notion of sisterhood that venerates rather than assimilates differences among sisters. 

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