Wounded Masculinities and Silenced Femininities: Humiliation in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives

Abstract

Postcolonial Criticism has long been invested in themes of violence, resistance, displacement, and identity, but the very concept of humiliation remains untouched and overlooked. Often subsumed under terms like oppression, suppression, exploitation, and others, the concept of humiliation is disregarded. Humiliation matters and requires special attention because it addresses not only the physical harm but also the systematic erosion of dignity, agency, and self-recognition. Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives offers a compelling literary site for examining humiliation as both a colonial strategy and a gendered experience. This paper argues that humiliation in Afterlives is profoundly gendered, shaped by the intersection of colonial power and indigenous patriarchy. Male humiliation is enacted through militarized discipline, bodily punishment, and coerced complicity with the empire, while female humiliation manifests through social erasure, sexual vulnerability, and affective dispossession. Drawing on postcolonial feminist theory, the paper demonstrates that Gurnah’s work complicates nationalist and masculinist narratives of colonial history by foregrounding quiet suffering and intimate degradation, particularly among women.