A Pathway to Female Homosociality through Disidentification in Kamila Shamsie’s Best of Friends

Abstract

The research undertakes the female-homosocial relations in Kamila Shamsie’s Best of Friends as a subversive approach, under the discipline of Homosociality. The research explores various dynamics of disidentification as a reactive force to resist the heteronormative society, in which identities are viewed as constant and fixed. The objective of the study is to deconstruct the notion of stable identity. Thus, disidentification in Shamsie’s Best of Friends introduces multiple tactical-survival strategies to (re)construct new identities. The research proves that female homosocial relations, as a subversive approach, empower the individuals among female gender within the socio-cultural and diasporic settings. Hence, disidentification and female homosociality defies the existing structure of heteropatriarchal society in which fixed gender binaries exist.