Though scholars have discussed postmodernism in Islam and South Asia before, they tend to (i) assume Muslims as a monolithic group, bypassing the diversity of different cultures and the interaction of these cultures with indigenous practices of Islam; (ii) study postmodernity synchronically, thereby eliding histor(ies) and the possibility of multiple temporalities; and (iii) compare postmodernity in non-Western countries with Western standards, and when these countries fail this test, declare them not-yet-postmodern, or even modern. Negligible and scant discussions of postmodernity that do take place inside Pakistan, most of which are published in newspaper articles, tend to focus on Western postmodernity and its evolution and contemporary position. There is no book-length discussion of postmodernity and postmodernist literary texts from Pakistan and its curious sociopolitical blend of Indo-Muslim and Anglo-Indian influences and interaction with the Islamic political foundations of the country. This project discusses postmodernity and postmodern literature in Pakistan. I argue that, because of a different political, cultural, and literary climate, postmodernity and postmodern literature in Pakistan are distinct from their Western counterparts. Because of technological advancement and neoliberal globalization, Pakistan experiences a different kind of postmodernity resulting in the production of a different kind of postmodern literature. I trace the historical employment of postmodern literary tropes from Indo-Islamic genres, i.e. dastan, to contextualize this conversation. Then I discuss experimental works of fiction like Sultana's Dream (1908), Bina Shah's Before She Sleeps (2018), and Soniah Kamal's Unmarriageable (2019). The last chapter explores the relationship of postmodernity, postmodern politics, and Pakistani and Muslim historiographic metafictional literary texts: The Satanic Verses (1988) and A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008). Hence, the work is regional and national, as well as comparative and transnational.

This paper is an interview study with 12 women between the ages of 17-88 from Bohuslän, Sweden and their thoughts about female virginity and the hymen. Today it has been proven that there exists no hymen that breaks at a woman’s first sexual intercourse. Nonetheless, the study shows that the myth of the hymen is still alive even though it is fading in the younger generations. All the women in the study have at some point in their lives believed there was a hymen but many have via education or media been informed that that’s not the case. Despite education, the hymen was still related to blood, pain, difficulties using feminine care products, or thoughts that something might rupture due to sport activities, like horse riding. Based on the women’s reports, this paper interprets why female virginity has become something that is in need of surveillance and control. As understood from Lévi-Strauss’s theories on the kinship system, the woman becomes a gift unit through the ritual of marriage. The alleged presence of the intact hymen is the valorizing factor in said structure.      The semi-structured interviews were analyzed through a content analysis and interpreted by using the post-modernistic theoretical frameworks, with focus on the ideas of Michel Foucault. Further post-structuralist theories are applied to interpret how language and action create norms and truths. The results indicate that the belief in the existence of the hymen as an anatomical structure took hold in medical science and popular culture in line with the hypothesis that power creates knowledge. The results also show that knowledge is not constant: from being an established truth among the older participants in the study, to the youngest generation expressing that the hymen is something “old”. Simultaneously, all women expressed that the hymen and female virginity are connected to discipline and power asymmetries. The results show that the hymen, in this specific context can be seen as a social construction with the aim of maintaining unity and discipline.