“I control you because I care for you”: Three Cs of Patriarchy in Shandhana Minhas’s Tunnel Vision

Abstract

This paper argues that care and control do not function as opposing forces within the Pakistani patriarchal social system but work as entangled acts through which hegemonic authority becomes legitimate and difficult to contest. This study brings María Puig de la Bellacasa’s theorisation of non-innocent care and Antonio Gramsci’s account of hegemony in conversation with Michel Foucault’s concept of discipline to conceptualise care, control, and consent as three pillars of patriarchy that I term the ‘Three Cs of patriarchy’. Shandana Minhas’s literary text Tunnel Vision (2007) is read diffractively to see how patriarchal power functions within an individual’s intimate, familial, social and institutional relations. The analysis discloses how the female protagonist’s comatose body presents a paradoxical situation where she is both cared for and controlled when she loses her consciousness, voice, and agency. Furthermore, Ayesha’s encounters reveal that care can implore consent to normalise unequal relations. Such patriarchal dynamics of care make control appear protective, whereas failure of such apparent care causes harm to vulnerable bodies in different ways.