Educational Discourse and the Constitution of Gendered Subjectivities in Pakistan

Abstract

In this chapter I discuss the constitution of gendered subjects and subjectivity in Pakistan’s educational discourse. I especially focus on the mechanisms embedded in curricula and the textbooks through which subjects1 and subjectivities are constituted and ordered. Curricula, especially textbooks, are the sites where educational discourse, drawing on the economic (peripheral capitalism, global capitalism), political (statist, nationalist) and religious discourses (among other discourses) constitutes gendered subjects and subjectivities. Textbooks are also the sites where these and other discourses compete and contend to assign or fix meanings to different signs in the discourse. Meaning fixation involves ascribing certain values to certain signs (notions, words, symbols, concepts) and the privileging of certain signs by ascribing to them superior meanings. Meaning fixation also involves the use of binaries (e.g., male-female, nation-enemy, etc.) to create the “other” where the first element is good, better, superior, rational, privileged, in other words, the “self,” and the second bad, worse than, inferior, irrational, in other words, the “other.”