THE POLITICS OF THE FEMALE BODY: A FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF SEXUALITY, SCIENCE AND SURVEILLANCE IN UZMA ASLAM'S "THE GEOMETRY OF GOD"

Abstract

This paper attempts to explore the politics of the female body in the novel The Geometry of God (2008) by Uzma Aslam Khan in an effort to understand how sexuality, science, and surveillance converge to influence and dictate female subjectivity. Although feminist criticism has discussed the body as a source of power, discipline, and resistance (Bartky, 1990; Bordo, 1993; Butler, 1990), no body of critical work has yet explored how South Asian Anglophone fiction engages with these debates. Existing literature on Khan's novel has focused on issues of science, religion, and modernity, but the feminist aspect of body politics has been overlooked so far. Informed by feminist poststructuralism (Weedon, 1997) and using an interpretive qualitative approach, this study employs feminist critical discourse analysis (Lazar, 2005) to decipher how the text critiques patriarchal, theological, and institutional processes of control. The discussion shows how Khan uses the female body not just as something that is to be fought between the state of oppression and the act of resistance, but something that presents the resistance, expression of creativity, and alternative knowledge, as well.

This study addresses a significant gap in this extant literature because it situates The Geometry of God in the broader feminist and postcolonial discourse. It demonstrates how writing by South Asian women challenges the hegemonic discourse and rewrites female subject agency, and how it challenges the politics of surveillance and sexuality.