Aamer Shaheen | Govt.College University Faisalabad Pakistan (original) (raw)

Papers by Aamer Shaheen

Pakistan Social Sciences Review, 2021

The paper critically analyses Benjamín Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World (2020) as ... more The paper critically analyses Benjamín Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World (2020) as a work of Historiographic Metafiction aiming to undermine the authority and veracity of scientific discourses hailing the individuals featured in the novel as men possessing an unparalleled genius unattainable for normal human beings, along with heaping praise on the scientific achievements. Labatut brings out their humanness, pulling no punches in his prose. Not stopping at that, he sheds light on the sinister side of scientific advancement, exposing all that these geniuses, knowingly or unknowingly, unleashed upon the world, the terrible price that science exacted from them. With some of the most significant leaps in the fields of science during the twentieth century at its nucleus, the novel views them from the atomic orbits around the nucleus. These individuals revolve like electrons around the nucleus of science. As the distance between the nucleus and the electron decreases, escaping the nucleus becomes harder and harder. The novel is structured similar to the concentric circles of an atom, with reality becoming more and more uncertain as one reaches deeper. The nucleus eventually proves to be Schwarzchild's singularity, an abyss impossible to escape. Labatut exposes science to be a god less benevolent and infallible than it appears to be, making his work relative in the present context of a global pandemic.

PalArch, 2023

The paper presents a comparative analysis of George Orwell's political allegory Animal Farm with ... more The paper presents a comparative analysis of George Orwell's political allegory Animal Farm with Pakistani politics. For Tambling (2010), "[a]llegory describes one thing under the image of another, or speaks one thing while implying something else" (p. 6), whereas Cuddon (2013) describes allegory as "a story or image with several layers of meaning: behind the literal or surface meaning lie one or more secondary meanings of varying degrees of complexity" (p. 21). Orwell used this literary device in his novella Animal Farm (1945) to reflect upon the failure of the Russian Revolution. This paper aims to analyze the novella's themes, concepts, and their relevance to the political history of Pakistan. Through this comparative study of Orwell's Animal Farm and Pakistani political history we examine power structures as well as the causes that lead to the failure of revolutions and nations. The paper locates the similar elements of betrayal, corruption, deceit, unchecked authority and class stratification as in Animal Farm that have contributed to shaping the socio-political contours of Pakistani nation over the years since her inception. Establishing Orwell's novella as a universal allegory the paper offers an introspective examination of the Pakistani political landscape, serving as a reminder that lessons learned from a universal allegory such as Animal Farm can help us

International Journal of Linguistics and Culture

Exploiting Glen S. Close’s study (2008), this paper attempts to explicate the position Fernanda M... more Exploiting Glen S. Close’s study (2008), this paper attempts to explicate the position Fernanda Melchor occupies on the Hispanic literary scene: how her novels Hurricane Season and Paradais fit in the packed ranks of Hispanic crime fiction, the novela negra; how they are beholden to their antecedents and the differences they have with said antecedents. Amply endowed with the grim workings of the novela negra, both novels are quite comparable with their contemporaries. In the long line of novela negra authors, Melchor is a rare female, delving into crime and showing it to the world through the eyes of a woman, highlighting the addictions, the violence, the corruption, the debauchery endemic in Mexican society and the misogyny underlying most of them. Locked in an incessant battle of survival, her characters are mirthless, helpless, and ruthless, breeding vicious and virulent violence against each other and themselves.

LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, Oct 17, 2021

Pakistan Social Sciences Review, 2022

Pakistan Social Sciences Review

The paper critically analyses Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World (2020) as ... more The paper critically analyses Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World (2020) as a work of Historiographic Metafiction aiming to undermine the authority and veracity of scientific discourses hailing the individuals featured in the novel as men possessing an unparalleled genius unattainable for normal human beings, along with heaping praise on the scientific achievements. Labatut brings out their humanness, pulling no punches in his prose. Not stopping at that, he sheds light on the sinister side of scientific advancement, exposing all that these geniuses, knowingly or unknowingly, unleashed upon the world, the terrible price that science exacted from them. With some of the most significant leaps in the fields of science during the twentieth century at its nucleus, the novel views them from the atomic orbits around the nucleus. These individuals revolve like electrons around the nucleus of science. As the distance between the nucleus and the electron decreases, escaping the nucleus becomes harder and harder. The novel is structured similar to the concentric circles of an atom, with reality becoming more and more uncertain as one reaches deeper. The nucleus eventually proves to be Schwarzchild’s singularity, an abyss impossible to escape. Labatut exposes science to be a god less benevolent and infallible than it appears to be, making his work relative in the present context of a global pandemic.

PSSR, 2022

The paper critically gazes at Arudpragasam's second novel A Passage North (2021) as a fictive tem... more The paper critically gazes at Arudpragasam's second novel A Passage North (2021) as a fictive temple site to commemorate the traumatic memories (during and after) of the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983-2009). Taking cue from Gerard Genette's structuralist theoretic observations as given in Graham Allen's book Intertextuality (2022 [2000]) with regard to the key term of 'Intertextuality' along with its associated terms: 'Hypotext' and 'Hypertext', the paper highlights half a dozen texts (ranging across genres of poetry, biography, prose, and documentary film) as intertextual allusions (hypotexts) to Arudpragrasam's novel (hypertext). The paper attempts to establish that Arudpragsam employs these intertextual allusions of the canonical literary and filmic texts as a conscious strategy, albeit labeled as 'superfluous overlays' or 'digressions' by some critics, to lead his readers to the cumulative significance of the novel as a converging temple site in memory of those Sri Lankan Tamils lost directly during the war or indirectly consumed by their postwar traumas.

Global Language Review, 2021

The present study aims to highlight the role of power in Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmo... more The present study aims to highlight the role of power in Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness through the ideas given by Michel Foucault. Roy discusses various power centers present in contemporary Indian society, which institutionalize the suppression faced by various characters in the novel on the basis of their caste, religion, social class, or political affiliations. The study intends to expose the dissection of these power centers active in society as the non-linear trajectory of power. The characters of Anjum, Tilo, Musa, and Revathy face suppression to the point of marginalization. This leads them to subvert the power structures of the society by resisting against them, thus negating the linear hierarchy of power.

Global Language Review

The Ghazal is a well-known genre of Urdu poetry. The translation of Ghazal into the English langu... more The Ghazal is a well-known genre of Urdu poetry. The translation of Ghazal into the English language poses specific challenges. Translating Ghalib, one of the greatest ghazal writers, into English, is a special case under consideration. Several translators have produced their versions of Ghalib’s Urdu ghazals. The present study is an effort to evaluate the performance of six translators who rendered a particular ghazal of Ghalib in the English language. The study utilizes the distinction between ‘literal’ and ‘sense-for-sense’ translation as perceived by Nida (2000 [1964]), and Vermeer (2000). The translations have been analyzed on the basis of three research questions which encompass the aspects of the type of translation, the form of the Ghazal, and the poetic appeal. The study offers useful insights into the translation of Ghazal into the English language.

Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler is full of psychological implications. It is a play in which Ibsen ... more Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler is full of psychological implications. It is a play in which Ibsen has dealt with the complexity of romantic relationships. The study relies on Freud's theory of the unconscious involving unconscious motives, repression, fear of intimacy, displacement, anxiety and neurosis. Many young characters in the play try to establish intimate relationships, but they fail in their effort. Most of the characters are suffering from the fear of intimacy. This leads to make an analysis of their unconscious motives and desires. The study finds that most of the characters in this play are controlled by their unconscious desire for having power over the people they want to be intimate with. This is why they fail to establish intimate relations with the important individuals in their life. The study offers an application of Freudian concepts to literature. It also helps in understanding causes for the failure of intimate relationships.

The paper studies Roy‟s fictive character of Anjum: an Indian Muslim „Hijra‟ of Old Delhi (Shahja... more The paper studies Roy‟s fictive character of Anjum: an Indian Muslim „Hijra‟ of Old Delhi (Shahjahanabad) as the literary sum total of Indian Muslim‟s social experience of communal violence and „Othering‟ from the theoretical perspective of „Postcolonial Subalternization‟ as explicated by Nayar (2008). The paper highlights various events of communal violence and „Othering‟, since the inception of the postcolonial nation-state of India in 1947, especially in the lives of Indian Muslims as shown in Roy‟s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (abbreviated as TMUH), to argue that these historical instances of brutality against them have actually been guided by the Hindutva doctrine that aims to vanquish all the Indian minority communities until they come under the fold of Hinduism either by converting or remaining socio-politically aloof and willing to celebrate the motherhood of Indian Nation State vis-à-vis Hinduness. The paper finds that these events of communal violence and „Othering‟ against Indian Muslims, especially, have contributed to the Hindutvavadi vision of subalternizing Indian Muslims to social ciphers.

PSSR, 2021

The paper closely hears the season opener song for Coke Studio 2020: "Na Tutteya Ve", in order to... more The paper closely hears the season opener song for Coke Studio 2020: "Na Tutteya Ve", in order to critically appreciate and analyze it as a tune of feminist activism. Contextualizing the critical discussion of the song within the theoretic perspectives of "feminist cultural analysis" as given by Franklin et al. (1996) and the concept of popular music as a feminist activist soundscape as given by Delap (2020), the paper highlights the songs arrival in Pakistani #MeToo background, alongside its lead singer and composer Meesha Shafi"s involvement in Pakistani #MeToo scenario since her legal feud with another leading male pop star Ali Zafar. The paper establishes the song"s timely arrival in furthering the Pakistani female consciousness as a feminist community vis-à-vis oppressive patriarchy and women"s secondary social status. The paper hears the song as a cultural specimen of Pakistani feminist music which, in its capacity as an artistic site, propounding the alternative female imaginary, broadcasts a call for revisiting the Pakistani female"s social situation, as well as questions the parallel male centric social centrality and supremacy.

PSSR, 2020

The paper reads closely Musharraf Ali Farooqi's The Merman and the Book of Power: A Qissa (2019) ... more The paper reads closely Musharraf Ali Farooqi's The Merman and the Book of Power: A Qissa (2019) as an adamantly conceived a cross between Romance/Dastan and the Novel genre. The paper explores MAF's claim regarding the creative shortcomings of Novel genre vis-à-vis its inadequacy to cater to the needs of exploiting fantastic imagination and scrutinizes his Qissa for its model praxis in incorporating Romance/Dastan narrative strategies as a specific case of genre re-visitation. Utilizing the key term of 'Romance' (as in Western critical theory) and 'Dastan' (as in Urdu critical theory) as the theoretic perspective to help read the target text the paper concludes that MAF deliberates the (re)familiarization of the long lost narrative strategies as utilized in Romance/Dastan to the contemporary Novel genre-neither debunking it nor devaluing it-albeit expanding the scope of narrative fictions.

ELF Annual Research Journal, 2019

The paper, through a close analysis of the fictive characters of Changez and Chuck, reads togethe... more The paper, through a close analysis of the fictive characters of Changez and Chuck, reads together Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) and H. M. Naqvi's Home Boy (2009) as pioneering literary texts that highlight the post-9/11 plight of American society plagued with xenophobia, racism and Islamophobia. Both the novels forward the images of the Pakistani expatriates, by fictionalizing their post-9/11 identity transformations, with their fast weakening ties with the host-land [America] as they are compelled to return, like prodigal sons, to their native homeland [Pakistan]. The paper exploits the theoretical observations regarding diasporic identity by the Postcolonial Studies scholars to provide a theoretic framework to guide the discussion of both the novels. The paper concludes that both Changez and Chuck are the prodigal sons whose decisions to return to their homeland are direct results of their inability to anchor in the host-land and wave off the traumas of their nightmarish social experiences as Pakistani expatriates in America in the turbulent times right after 9/11.

The paper critically analyses Kamila Shamsie's highly political novel Home Fire by juxtaposing th... more The paper critically analyses Kamila Shamsie's highly political novel Home Fire by juxtaposing the character; Karamat Lone and Parvaiz Pasha as the two extreme viewpoints representing the rise of obsessive 'Westoxification' and an ever clinging sticky 'Fundamentalism' respectively that pit the Aneeka/Eamonn love affair to the inconsolable destiny of their collateral damage. The paper, taking for granted the most popularly established interpretation of the novel as a present day fictive adaptation of Sophocles' drama Antigone, advances another dimension of literary interpretation, beyond Antigone, by playing out the concepts of 'Westoxification' and 'Fundamentalism' as linked with the postcolonial studies by the postcolonial critic Klaus Stierstorfer. The paper marks Shamsie's novel as a timely overture to the perils of rising Islamophobic 'Westoxification' of so called Muslims like Karamat Lone and its devastating effects on innocent people like Aneeka and Eamonn. Shamsie's fictive depiction of a post-9/11 Britain is essentially of the one that has reeked herself of intolerance and in her installation of extreme safety measures has introduced draconian laws of citizenship that run the greater risk of estranging its innocent citizens to the fading human face of multicultural secular England that once bore the banners of civilization. This research argues that Kamila Shamsie, by portraying the battling trends of obsessive 'Westoxification' and an overwhelmingly reclaiming 'Fundamentalism' among Pakistani-British diasporics, complicates and confronts the widespread stereotyping single dimensional Islamophobic discursive misrepresentations of Pakistani-British Muslims voluminously exacerbated post-9/11 and post-7/7 events.

The paper, through its study of the Dalit character of Tarlochan Kumar (Tochi), categorizes Sunje... more The paper, through its study of the Dalit character of Tarlochan Kumar (Tochi), categorizes Sunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways (2015) as a vibrant piece of Anglophone Dalit Writing from the outside. Drawing its theoretic framework from the postcolonial studies, the paper incorporates Pramod K. Nayar's concept of 'Postcolonial Subalternization' and 'Postcolonial Protest' along with Laura R. Brueck's concept of 'Dalit Chetna' (consciousness) to analyze Sahota's novel The Year of the Runaways. The study highlights the novel as a 'Postcolonial Protest' narrative utilizing upon the device of realism as a prominent feature of Dalit Writing. The protagonist Tochi undergoes severe caste based subalternity both at India and England by the high caste Hindus and Sikhs respectively. He is bestowed with a compromised agency in the novel (unlike a narrative with 'Dalit Chetna') to resist, rebel and change his subalternity. The study concludes with establishing Sunjeev Sahota, belonging to high class of 'Jats', as an Anglophone non-Dalit writer from the outside with a partial 'Dalit Chetna', albeit, the publication of the novel is timely enough to background the political context of "Modi Sarkar" in India with its rise in intercaste and inter-religious intolerance.

Herta Muller, in The Passport, explores the history of Romania and rewrites it in a way that her ... more Herta Muller, in The Passport, explores the history of Romania and rewrites it in a way that her characters clearly portray the repressed life of Romanian people within a society where money is recognized as God and human beings are presented as objects. Muller's attempt to represent the socio-political scenario of Romania and the hollowness of society proves efficacious in revamping one's ideology which was firstly adopted by willingness. The concept of ideology is guided by the bourgeoisie ideology which helps in constructing the base and superstructure of a society in The Passport. The study highlights Muller's questioning about the hollowness of society's base and superstructure resultant of totalitarianism; a devastating force to crush common man's life in The Passport.

Mohammed Hanif, a comic genius, represents feminist agenda in his novel Our Lady of Alice Bhatti ... more Mohammed Hanif, a comic genius, represents feminist agenda in his novel Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by empowering his protagonist Alice Bhatti with the tool of magical realism. With a very strong interest in sprawling metropolis Karachi, he delineates the dilemma of hypocritically conservative Pakistani society where women are sexually harassed, shot or hacked, strangled or suffocated, poisoned or burnt and hanged or buried alive. But Mohammed Hanif's headstrong protagonist, Alice Joseph Bhatti, is fighting against Pakistan's misogynous patriarchy and religious majority. Hanif stands fast in advocating the role of Pakistani women who are conversant in patriarchal discourse. Our Lady of Alice Bhatti foils the patriarchal hegemony by incorporating magical agency in Alice Bhatti to restore her feminine prestige and primacy in the real mundane phallocentric world. The exploitation of the Christian Choorahs (Sweepers) in the novel is also the indication of Muslim intolerant attitude towards minorities of Pakistan. The objective of the research is to highlight the depth of Pakistani Literature in the broader realm of South Asian Literature which has recently gained more momentum with the start of a number of Literary Awards for this region. The research draws it Theoretical Framework from the general understanding of the feminist theory and magical realism. The contemporaneous nature of the research gives it a contemporaneous relevance and scope. Hanif has carved Alice Bhatti as a saint by the end of the novel with the help of magical realism. Therefore suggesting that Hanif's feminine characters achieve their place and control over society when they are dead.

Books by Aamer Shaheen

Diasporic Predicaments and War Memories in Contemporary South Asian Anglophone Fiction , 2022