Resistance from the Periphery: A Power Structured Traumatic Study of Aakhri Station by Sarmad Khoosat (2018)

Abstract

Aim of the Study: This research aims to explore the trauma of women with Foucauldian power structures represented in Sarmad Khoosat’s Aakhri Station (2018) written by Amna Mufti and produced by Kashf Foundation Production and Sarmad Khoosat. It describes the lives of seven marginalized women of different background and classes living in multiple regions of Pakistan. This study tends to examine free will and feminine power in the light of ‘memory’ and ‘resistance’ in Cathy Caruth’s Trauma Theory.

Methodology: By applying the notion of fragmented consciousness by Cathy Caruth with Michel Foucault’s power structure to Aakhri Station’s post-colonial land, this study contends that women are bound within certain traumatic spaces.

Findings: By considering resistance as a tool against power structure of patriarchy, this qualitative study defines the notion of a woman standing against violence in public and domestic life space towards a new feminine narrative in Pakistani cinema.

Conclusion: The work focus on social hierarchies, prevalent patriarchal norms and culture and hegemonic discourses which eventually becomes the root-cause of acts of violence. Hence, patriarchs unleash violence on women and consider it as their fundamental right. By building upon the notion of Foucault’s disciplinary power, this study also highlights that women in Aakhri Station are yearning for empowerment in a global space where power positions are shifted and importance of female sanity are emerging.