Beyond Reproduction: An Epistemological Search for a “Woman” in Manjula Padmanabhan’s Escape and The Island of Lost Girls - Acta Universitatis Sapientiae

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica, 15, 1 (2023) 37–53

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0003

Abstract. Who is a woman? In a gender-fluid typical world, the answer to this question invites a serious exposition of non-linear and non-binary possibilities. As the biological definition becomes more inclusive of fragmented identities, it becomes extremely complicated to arrive at a simplistic, innocent truth of recognition. Within the third-world dynamics, this question invites more dimensions. Set against the backdrop of mass female genocide on the occasion of perfecting cloning, Manjula Padmanabhan in her works of futuristic dystopian fiction, Escape (2015) and The Island of Lost Girls (2017), has taken up this issue of womanhood and furtively trodden to arrive at a philosophical space that allows the modernist epistemological notion of a “woman” as a well-defined category to reincarnate within a postmodern paradigm to help locate women beyond the generic nuances of reproduction and menial labour. Through analysing the selective works, this research article aims at arriving close to the model of womanhood and depicting the plurality of truth in action.

Keywords: epistemology, dystopian fiction, woman, reproduction, Indian fiction