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Abstract
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The exploration of subaltern voices and colonial afterlives in these two postcolonial novels is crucial for several interrelated reasons. First, the postcolonial turn in modern literary criticism has shown that women in the ex-colonized world suffer from what scholars describe as "double colonization" colonization not only as colonized peoples but also as women under patriarchal orders. As Chandra Talpade Mohanty argues, "Under Western Eyes," colonizing powers constructed colonized women as "passive, victimized individuals who were in need of western intervention," thereby allowing colonialism to flourish while maintaining the status quo for gender hierarchies.
Second, the continued global muting of voices of women from sites in the Global South requires literary scholarship that simultaneously amplifies these voices while rigorously analyzing how colonial power relations continue to confine their agency and representation. Third, Spivak's celebrated claim that "the subaltern cannot speak" requires immediate rethinking via close reading that explores these contemporary postcolonial women writers' narratives as spaces where subaltern voices struggle to articulate themselves even in the face of epistemic violence.
Fourth, the historical specificity of these novels—Turkey's troubled relations with its Ottoman imperial past and gendered social reconfigurations in the wake of Afghanistan's postcolonial wars—furnishes particular case studies for exploring how colonial vestiges register within contrasting sociopolitical registers. As researcher Fatemeh Emadi observes, "The Status of Women in Afghan Society" has been profoundly shaped by imperial intervention and indigenous patriarchal structures. Finally, this study disrupts current debates on diaspora and the experience of migration with postcolonial consciousness by showing how geographic displacement and transnational positioning situate critical perspectives on homeland patriarchal institutions.
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