Of Women's Bonds: Female Friendship and Feminist Ethics of Care in Tabish Khair's Just Another Jihadi Jane. Issue 3 (3rd July 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Karmakar, Indrani
• Is Part Of: Wasafiri. Volume 36:Issue 3(2021)
• Page Start: 51
• Page End: 58
• Publication Date: 2021-07-03
• Subjects: Islam -- feminism -- friendship -- bell hooks -- British Muslims; English literature -- Developing countries -- Periodicals; 820.991724
• DOI: 10.1080/02690055.2021.1918437
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0269-0055

Abstract

Abstract : Set in a contemporary British Muslim context, Tabish Khair's 2016 novel Just Another Jihadi Jane grapples with the issue of religious extremism from a female perspective. The narrative arc, however, journeys from radicalisation to redemption, which is captured in powerful and enduring female bonds. The article examines how the female bonds, as portrayed in the novel, are shaped by and reshape the context and what they mean for the feminist conversation on solidarity and sisterhood. Drawing on feminist scholarship on friendship and psychoanalysis, the article explores how the novel's charting of female bonding and its vicissitudes underline an unequal personal and political setting within which female friendship is being forged. Nonetheless, the multiple sisterhoods depicted in the novel evince ethical and subversive potential. Offering a close reading of the text through the prism of care ethics, the essay argues that the text locates ethical relationality in its female bonds and sisterhoods, which in turn advances an ethic of care that both recognises and transcends differences.