Elusive Lives

Imagination and the Gendered Self in South Asia

“…22 Second, quite apart from tackling regional and cultural misperceptions, the autobiographical genre has also been questioned as a legitimate archive for meeting 'objective' standards for recording history. 23 Throughout her book, Lambert-Hurley responds to these queries by way of challenging their foundational premises, while also broadening their scope and discussing the generic and idiomatic registers in which a 'self' is articulated for South Asian Muslim women. The book is indeed trying to 'find ways of recovering' their voices, but also refuses to take categories such as 'Muslim' for granted.…”

“…The book is indeed trying to 'find ways of recovering' their voices, but also refuses to take categories such as 'Muslim' for granted. 24 Being attentive to the specificities and singularities of the two hundred texts that make it to her bibliography, Lambert-Hurley organises her chapters around the 'what, who, where, how, and why' against which these authors' agency and subjectivity can be problematised. 25 By giving us insights into the ethnographic and archival journeys through which she formed a sample set, Lambert-Hurley anticipates the blurring of genre conventions her subjects embody, meaning that while autobiographical writings took the form of reformist literature, travel memoirs, diaries, letters, speeches, interviews and films, such expansiveness inevitably led to sense of 'genre instability' for the researcher herself.…”

“…24 Being attentive to the specificities and singularities of the two hundred texts that make it to her bibliography, Lambert-Hurley organises her chapters around the 'what, who, where, how, and why' against which these authors' agency and subjectivity can be problematised. 25 By giving us insights into the ethnographic and archival journeys through which she formed a sample set, Lambert-Hurley anticipates the blurring of genre conventions her subjects embody, meaning that while autobiographical writings took the form of reformist literature, travel memoirs, diaries, letters, speeches, interviews and films, such expansiveness inevitably led to sense of 'genre instability' for the researcher herself. What became clearer across these various mediums is that while men found it easier to write a coherent narrative about the individualised self, the woman writer often took resort to collectivities such as 'family, friendship, or kinship networks' to assert an authorial 'I'.…”

“…What became clearer across these various mediums is that while men found it easier to write a coherent narrative about the individualised self, the woman writer often took resort to collectivities such as 'family, friendship, or kinship networks' to assert an authorial 'I'. 26 What was often an account of some other life or event, even an explicitly biographical endeavour, became a source for the self-writing traditionally expected from an 'ap biti' or 'khud navisht'. 27 In the second chapter, Lambert-Hurley outlines the sociology of autobiographical authorship, conceding that in a period where literacy rates were generally low, the writing of one's life was itself a 'pretty elite endeavour' (barring notable exceptions, such as the ones above).…”

“…26 What was often an account of some other life or event, even an explicitly biographical endeavour, became a source for the self-writing traditionally expected from an 'ap biti' or 'khud navisht'. 27 In the second chapter, Lambert-Hurley outlines the sociology of autobiographical authorship, conceding that in a period where literacy rates were generally low, the writing of one's life was itself a 'pretty elite endeavour' (barring notable exceptions, such as the ones above). 28 However, the fact of literacy is not sufficient to explain why somebody chose to write a life-story.…”