Subaltern Voices and Agency in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Desertion

Abstract

This study examines the dynamics of subaltern voices and silences in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Desertion, focusing on the female characters Rehana, Jamila, Farida, and Gray. Considering Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s notion of the subaltern and her critical inquiry “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, the research investigates how Gurnah represents women’s struggle to articulate their voices within patriarchal, colonial, and postcolonial power structures. In Desertion, silence and speech function as interdependent modes of resistance and survival, challenging the binaries of voicelessness and agency. Through Rehana’s constrained expression, Jamila’s emotional resilience, Farida’s repressed desires, and Gray’s introspective withdrawal, Gurnah constructs a layered discourse on how subaltern women navigate social and political marginalization in East Africa. The analysis reveals that silence in Gurnah’s narrative is not the absence of voice but a transformative strategy of communication and defiance. Ultimately, this study underscores how Gurnah redefines subaltern voices by converting silence into an act of empowerment, thus illuminating the potential of muted expressions to resist domination and assert female subjectivity within postcolonial discourse.