Delusional states: Love, Citzenship and resistance in Gilgit-Baltistan

This talk will examine the emotional and intimate logics of occupation, citizenship, and state-making in Gilgit-Baltistan, a contested borderland between India and Pakistan that forms part of the Kashmir dispute. Professor Ali will illuminate how within the hate-centered, toxic nationalisms of India and Pakistan lie other stories—of love and betrayal, loyalty and suspicion, beauty and terror—that help us grasp how the Kashmir conflict is affectively structured and experienced on the ground. She will also shed light on how the situation in Gilgit-Baltistan helps us think through the larger questions of nationalism, dissent, and citizenship in the contexts of Pakistan, India, and South Asia at present.