Subaltern Resistance and Aporia in Shaheen Akhtar’s <i>The Search</i>

Abstract

 This paper aims to examine the grassroot level resistance of the war heroines of Bangladesh, who endured ineffable atrocities during the Liberation War in 1971 as well as in post-conflict Bangladesh, as depicted in Shaheen Akhtar’s The Search. The war heroines, often (mis)represented through passivity and victimisation by earlier scholars, writers, and activists, exhibited defiance in the face of continuous hurdles not only during the war but also in the post-war period, which remains notably unacknowledged and veiled. Hence, apart from examining their resistance, this paper attempts to shed light on the impetuses delineated in the novel, which despite the war heroines’ disaffection and resistance, push them towards the realm of subalternity, evoking a sense of aporia. However, this paper contends that this sense of aporia is undercut at the end of the novel through the war heroines’ rejection of the previous hegemonic social structure and venture to re-ground their life-world. To this end, the paper will incorporate recent accretions in the theoretical field of gendered subalternity, which focus on the narrative shift from subalternity to resistance, albeit the possible aporia followed by the struggle of subalterns.