Human Rights and the Price of Upward Mobilityin Dur-e-Aziz Amna’s A Splintering

Abstract

This thesis examines how the pursuit of human rights and upward mobility leads to tragedy
rather than fulfilment for a subaltern woman in Dur e Aziz Amna’s A Splintering (2025). It
focuses on Tara, a young woman from a poor family in rural Punjab, Pakistan. This study
applies Ratna Kapur’s human rights critique to explain how Tara’s ambition shifts from
aspirational to avaricious and how she becomes what Kapur calls a “failed or unhappy
subaltern subject.” The concept of the “failed or unhappy subaltern subject” has been studied
in human rights scholarship, but this investigation applies it specifically to a contemporary
Pakistani novel, thereby filling a significant gap in the literature. The analysis, which is
qualitative in nature, applies Kapur’s theoretical framework to argue that the acquisition of
human rights represents the “terminal limits” of what rights can achieve rather than the
moment of liberation. The main argument is that Tara’s upward mobility does not lead to
freedom and happiness but instead to despair and moral corruption. Human rights, as Kapur
argues, cannot produce meaningful happiness for subaltern subjects