SLOW VIOLENCE: GENDER, INTERSECTIONALITY, AND CLIMATE VULNERABILITIES: AN ANALYTICAL STUDY OF THINNER THAN SKIN

Author(s) : Majeed Munazza and Bhatti Shaheena Ayub

Abstract:

This article intends to comprehend the complex relation between gender, intersectionality, and climate vulnerabilities. For this purpose we have chosen the fiction work Thinner than Skin[] by Uzma Aslam Khan. The theoretical framework for conducting this qualitative research has been built by using the underpinnings from Nixon’s Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor[]. The term slow violence stands for delayed destruction that is attritional and incremental in nature because exploitation of the poor people and their ecology results in delayed destruction that spans over time and space. The theory of slow violence underscores intersectionality by defining ‘poor’ as a compendious category that is used for those people who are victims of marginalization on biological, economic, racial, ethnic, religious, or other grounds. There is intersectionality between various systems of oppression that make the existence of the poor vulnerable. Textual exegesis of TTS accentuates that Maryam is marginalised on the basis of gender, ethnicity, religion, and class. There is a whole chain of hegemonic overlords with intersecting interests which worsens the standard of life and even threatens the very existence of Maryam’s family. This family of Steppe herders faces stationary displacement as their vernacular landscape is slowly and gradually turned into official landscape. Hence, they are pitted against climate vulnerabilities owing to incremental and attritional slow violence. The article concludes that poor stratum of the society is more likely to confront climate vulnerabilities because human disposability and ecological disposability are inseparable. The research anticipates to disrupt the conditions of repudiation faced by women who confront climate vulnerabilities due to marginalization on various intersectional grounds.
Keywords: intersectionality, slow violence, poor, disposability, climate vulnerability