Affect as a Technology of Rule: Militarism in Pakistan
Saturated with tropes of honour, nation and gender, military deaths are political instances that attach meaning to private grief to produce a public politics of service and sacrifice for the nation-state. The Pakistan Military invested heavily in crafted rituals for mourning dead soldiers as soldier casualties and the clamour against ‘America’s war’ mounted during the military operations in the ‘War on Terror.’ Through an ethnographic exploration of soldier death in military commemorative ceremonies and its reception in ‘martial’ villages in Punjab, this talk explores the gap between everyday experiences of families that mourn their dead in rural Pakistan and the idealized image of the martyr that saturates national representations. Positioning dead body politics and ritualistic mourning as technologies of rule, through a focus on subjectivity, intimacy and affect, the talk will explicate the persuasive powers through which hegemonic institutions seek to produce consensus and ideological conformity.
Date: 19 October 2021, 14:00 (Tuesday, 2nd week, Michaelmas 2021)
Venue: Online - Zoom
Speaker: Maria Rashid (UCL)
Organising department: Asian Studies Centre
Organiser: Dr Nayanika Mathur (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: asian@sant.ox.ac.uk
Part of: Modern South Asian Studies Seminar Series
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m5WyuVBzRM-XI_NUvGsKjg
Booking email: asian@sant.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Public
Editor: Clare Salter