Can the Subaltern (as Woman) Speak? Inversing ‘Male-chauvinism’ in the Film Rakkushi

Abstract

Raising voices for ‘Nari’ or ‘Women’, writing against misogynistic ingrained prejudices to establish women’s facilities, and dignities in the society by inversing the ideologies about women as the subaltern, orient, other, or inferior are noteworthy resistances of Bangladeshi national poet Qazi Nazrul Islam. He stands against prejudices about women in his “Rakkushi” [“Witch”]. This paper scrutinizes two female characters portrayed on the screen, based on Islam’s short story, to bring out how women have been epitomized as empowered, strong, and resistant entities in Islam’s writing as well as Rahman’s ‘anti-male-chauvinistic’ intention to depict how to be emancipated from ‘male-chauvinism’ on the screen by referencing de Beauvoir and Spivak’s theoretical framework to reach the final consequence on the agenda ‘inversing male-chauvinism’, and finally, justifies women as the subalterns who can speak in society.