Power, Privilege and Class Struggles: Unravelling Pakistani Society by Decoding Socio-Hierarchies

Abstract

This destabilized hierarchy of power, privilege and class struggles in Pakistani society is the subject of this paper, which investigates how literatures, cultures and structures are produced to reiterate or resist those hierarchies. Taking its inspiration from Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptualization of capital, Michel Foucault’s ideas about power and surveillance, and postcolonial critiques developed by Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha the analysis explores the ways in which elites establish dominance as at once historically evolved while maintaining a silencing or falsifying of more marginal voices. Using close readings of Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke, Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire and Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes in conjunction with sociological analysis, the article illustrates how Pakistani Anglophone literature mirrors and critiques inequities that have been embedded in society. In the context of history, politics, and culture that frames texts, it brings attention to literature’s double function: unmasking privilege while imagining counter-narratives of justice. In the end, this study maintains that literature is not a simple reflection but a challenge, and it can provide imaginative resources for more democratic futures.