“Itni Behuda Aurat1 !”

Lesbianism and Queer Spatial Politics in Angeline Malik’s Chewing Gum

Abstract

This paper is a queer spatial study of the episode Chewing
Gum of the Pakistani anthology series, Kitni Girhaiñ Bāqi Haiñ2
(2016- ).
This 40-minute episode marked the first instance of onscreen lesbianism
in Pakistani visual media, and was subject to much controversy
immediately following its air date. This paper will look into how Malik
constructs female queerness onscreen, and how she sees female deviant
sexualities as potentially threatening to heteronormative structures,
especially to the state-sponsored institution of marriage, and the
sacrosanct domestic, martial space. Chewing Gum configures domesticity
as a state of being closeted which is broken in and dismantled by Qandeel,
a queer woman who performs heterosexuality as a means of intruding
upon the private space, and then de-phallicises it. The queer women of
Chewing Gum, thus, create an emancipative space which accommodates
anti-nationalist and non-normative identities. Moreover, through them
queer experience itself has been reimagined as being internally
heterogenous, thus complicating what it means to be queer within
Pakistani urban and nationalist cartographies.