Precarious Lives Precarious Geographies: Representation of Biopolitics, Violence and Necropolitics in Contemporary Pakistani Anglophone Fiction

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which Pakistani writers—Jamil Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon and Fatima Bhutto’s The Shadow of the Crescent Moon—rebut violence and politics of life and death in the tribal areas of Pakistan against the backdrop of effects of wars in the neighbouring Afghanistan. Even though violence varies between and within countries, Pakistan and its tribal areas have long been seen as the epicentre to execute or take refuge by those who have been involved in the acts of violence and extremism in the region. This tribal region due to its special constitutional status has been considered as safe haven for people fighting against their own state and in the region; first against the Soviet and later the Unites States-led war against terrorism which affected the life of people living in the region. Through the examination of literary texts, I argue that life in the tribal areas of Pakistan was managed through indigenous structures which maintained discipline for centuries before the region was exposed to foreign occupations and wars in the neighbouring Afghanistan; as a result of foreign occupations (Soviet and war on terror) in the neighbouring areas the strategies of domination, subjugation and occupation also changed. Using the theoretical framework of violence and politics of life and death developed by Michael Foucault, Achille Mbembe, Giorgio Agamben, Zygmunt Baumann and others, this article highlights the shift from ‘making live and letting die’ to ‘let live and make die’ in the tribal region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is qualitative research with a specific focus on violence in the selected texts in the context of tribal areas. The similar effects in other parts of the country can be explored through future studies. Keywords: Biopolitics, Necropolitics, Violence, Tribal Areas of Pakistan, Effects of Wars

Political Violence and Necropolitics in Omar Shahid Hamid’s The Prisoner

“…Debjani Banerjee (2020) analyses British Muslim identities in Anglophone Pakistani fiction. The most recent work on fictional representation of violence and politics is of Ahmed (2021) who analyses the fiction of Fatima Bhutto and Jamil Ahmad in the context of tribal region of Pakistan. He argues that more violent structures have replaced the old traditional structures of tribal region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.…”