Repositioning Female Sensibility: A Postfeminist Study of Pakistani Chick Lit The Diary of a Social Butterfly

Abstract

The paper studies the complexities of contemporary Pakistani female sensibility problematized by Pakistani chick lit. The Diary of a Social Butterfly is an intricate work of postfeminism presenting new female visibility and sensibility by challenging traditional notions of Pakistani womanhood. The study explores the struggles, resistance, and agency of Butterfly as she navigates through intersectional socio-cultural and politico-economic milieu of Pakistani society, creating an inclusive space for nuanced discussions on power dynamics and gender roles within Pakistani gender topology shaped by hegemonizing nexus of globalization, neoliberalism, and popular culture. It is qualitative research that studies repositioning of Pakistani female sensibility using critical angles of Gill’s postfeminist sensibility, Dosekun’s transcultural postfeminism and Mohanty’s agentic third world feminism. The study reveals that Pakistani chick lit not only problematizes the polemics of Western postfeminism, but challenges the tropes of Pakistani feminism, offers nuances of heteronormativity, provides re-positioned desi postfeminist sensibility and becomes an emancipatory paradigm in which Butterfly enjoys autonomy formulating a paradox of postfeminism.