INTERROGATION OF GENDER BINARIES IN SIDHWA’S ICE-CANDY MAN FROM BUTLERIAN PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The study aims at consideration of gender-delineation in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy Man in the perspective of Judith Butler’s deconstructive approach of gender-performativity.  All of her four novels Cracking India, The Crow Eaters, The Pakistani Bride and American Brat may present a different approach of gender but here the focus of the present paper is to investigate and interrogate gender binaries in the selected novel. Sidhwa like most of other diaspora female English writers, her works yield and highlight issues, brawls and conflicts of gender in Pakistani patriarchal society particularly at the time of the partition of the subcontinent. The gender representation of focused characters in Sidhwa’s novel struggles to break that gender-matrix. This blurring of normative of gender binarism which is social and cultural constructs; it makes gender as fluid subject to their actions and performances. The research is an attempt to remove the misconception that gender- identity is subject to sex-status of characters. From Butlerian perspective of gender-performativity, it is contended to explore that how the constraints of binaries are shattered down. The paper may offer an alternative conceptualization to the already existing notion of gender and it might depict how these gender binaries become unstable and indeterminate.