2024

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Browsing 2024 by Author "Asma Sarwar"

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    Thresholds in gordimer's short stories
    (UMT Lahore, 2024) Asma Sarwar
    This study examines postcolonial perspectives on thresholds especially concentrating on liminal spaces, as well as their projection in Nadine Gordimer's selected short stories. Postcolonial philosophers such as Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak recognize that the colonized were not passive or homogeneous victims of colonialism, but rather active and heterogeneous actors involved in various modes of resistance, negotiation, and adaptation. On the one hand the concept of hybridity proposed by Bhabha generates a third space of enunciation in which new meanings and possibilities can develop. On the other hand, the word "threshold" conjures up ideas of entering and exiting, routes, crossings, and transformation. It denotes the turning point where decisions must be taken to proceed. While liminality defines the liminal space where cultural transition occurs, Turner's concept of liminality, characterized by ambiguity and uncertainty, helps understand how it shapes personality, emphasizes agency, and connects thought and experience. This literary case study argues that hybridized female protagonists in Gordimer's collections of short stories "A Chip of Glass Ruby" and "A Town and Country Lovers" although positioned in their symbolic thresholds and liminal spaces, in the end, are unable to cross their thresholds and complete their transformation. The thesis investigates their struggle in the liminal spaces and traces the reasons and causes behind their failure to cross these spaces.