A Marxist Reading of In the Name of Honor by Mukhtar Mai

Abstract

The memoir In the Name of Honour (2006) by Mukhtar Mai recounts her traumatized experience of gang rape in rural Pakistan and her subsequent search to find justice but it must be seen as more than a personal story of violence. Her narrative reveals the interplay of feudal patriarchy, hierarchy of classes and collusion of the state to contribute to maintaining the oppression. One of the Marxist approaches emphasizes the assumption that the bodies of women are the spaces of material and symbolic dominance and that honour is the instrument of ideology in order to perpetuate the domination of the elites. The Marxist and feminist theoretical perspectives are approached to the experience of Mai in this paper, and the emphasis is on the interaction between economic and patriarchal oppression and political repression.  It examines gendered violence as a form of control in the society as well as the influence of the feudal elites, state institutions and the culture. This increases the submissiveness of the classes and even sexes. At the same time, the paper points to the resistance of Mai - her decision to advertise, to seek justice, to construct educational facilities - as a revolutionary kind of practice, which confronts the structures of oppression, which are deeply ingrained. By the close of it all, her memoir is not only a survival but it is also a highly critical examination of how power is dramatized, just as personal positions can become political positions and how individual efforts can be collectivized.