Tracing Horror and Violence in Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan through Speculative Fiction

Abstract

This study will take living bodies as abjections in the selected short stories. This study analyzes the characters by using Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytical concept of abject, which displays violence committed against the marginalized group in the selected stories from Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan. The purpose of the study is to critically evaluate how speculative fiction deals with marginalized communities, portraying them as abject to evoke horror in the stories. The descriptions and vivid imagery used by the writer in these fables create a repulsive atmosphere for the readers. The study will comment on the mindset of the dominant group in the center of society and their treatment of those who are living in the peripheries. The focus of the study is to explore how the bodily experience of characters in a prejudiced community in terms of body mutilation, starvation, poor hygiene, and physical assault adds to the process of abjection. The research, therefore, is an analytical and in-depth study.