Exploring Competing Approaches to Religious and Liberal National Identity of Pakistan: A Post-Structuralist Reading of the National Identity and History of Pakistan by the Pakistani Feminist Filmmakers

Abstract

This study examines Pakistani documentary films produced by feminist filmmakers, focusing on how they construct representations of Pakistan’s national identity and history. Situated against dominant narratives circulated through state media and commercial television, which often reflect right-wing ideological orientations, the study explores alternative historiographical and identity formations. The objective is to analyses how feminist documentary practices reconfigure national memory and challenge hegemonic accounts of history and identity. Drawing on documentary theories and employing a post-structuralist textual analysis, the study treats documentaries as sites of unstable and contested meanings shaped through discourse, power, and ideology. Through close reading of three selected films, the analysis identifies how meaning is produced through language, narrative strategies, and representational choices rather than reflecting fixed or objective truths. The findings suggest that, in contrast to mainstream media, feminist filmmakers construct a more critical, left-liberal perspective that foregrounds plurality, inclusivity, and secular articulations of national identity. Their documentaries destabilize dominant historiographical frameworks by questioning the centrality of Islamic ideology as a governing principle of Pakistan’s identity formation. The study concludes that Pakistani feminist documentary functions as a counter-discursive practice that reimagines history and nationhood, expanding the possibilities of interpreting Pakistan’s identity beyond hegemonic ideological boundaries.

          Keywords: counter-discursive practice, Feminist filmmakers, hegemonic discourse, national identity, Pakistani documentary films, post-structuralist analysis