Cultural Crucible and Feminine Angst: A Psychoanalytical Study of Kishwar Naheed’s Selected Poems

Abstract

Sense of injustice is one of the prime factors that put an adverse impact on the psychological condition of the victims of an exploitative social system. This article discusses how the patriarchal oppression creates a strong sense of despondency among women that ultimately culminates into an uncontrolled anguish. In the article, Kishwar Naheed’s poems selected from the anthology Salt in the Wounds (2020) have been studied. The anthology comprises English translations of Naheed’s representative poems. The poems negotiated with in the articles are vocal expressions of the malevolent gendered practices and misogynistic transgressions. The argument is theoretically supported by Louise Renée’s (2000) reading of melancholy and its relation to gendered discourses. As Renée finds a manifest interrelation between patriarchal oppression and melancholy, this article explains how the poetry produced in the context of Pakistan expresses the same kind of resentment and anguish. Thus, the article elaborates the causal relation between gendered injustice and psychosocial disruption as represented in the selected poems.