1 00:00:10,140 --> 00:00:22,680 Let's go poorly. Well, good afternoon, everyone, and a very warm welcome to this fourth seminar of the term at the South Asia Connector. 2 00:00:22,680 --> 00:00:32,610 But the South Asian seminar here in Oxford today, it's a very great pleasure to welcome Dr Nosheen Ali. 3 00:00:32,610 --> 00:00:40,350 Dr Ali is a sociologist who's currently serving as faculty global faculty in residence at NYU. 4 00:00:40,350 --> 00:00:52,410 She researches state making ecology and Muslim cultural politics in South Asia with a particular focus on Pakistan and Kashmir. 5 00:00:52,410 --> 00:01:02,340 And she's going to talk to us today about her recent work, which has a very, very interesting and intriguing title. 6 00:01:02,340 --> 00:01:12,250 Delusional States Love, Citizenship and Resistance in Gilgit about it's done. 7 00:01:12,250 --> 00:01:17,100 And for those of you who are joining us from outside Oxford, 8 00:01:17,100 --> 00:01:26,640 there will be some time at the end of Dr Ali's presentation for questions which you can send in via the chat box. 9 00:01:26,640 --> 00:01:29,490 If you think you might want to ask a question. 10 00:01:29,490 --> 00:01:36,240 Don't waste until the end of the presentation to send it in, because sometimes there is a little bit of a delay. 11 00:01:36,240 --> 00:01:40,350 So you're you're very welcome to send in questions throughout the talk. 12 00:01:40,350 --> 00:01:44,370 And Dr Ali will do her best to answer them at the end of the talk. 13 00:01:44,370 --> 00:01:50,180 Before we then move to our particular focussed Oxford discussion. 14 00:01:50,180 --> 00:01:55,890 So, Dr Ali, over to you. And much looking forward to your presentation. 15 00:01:55,890 --> 00:02:06,370 Thank you, Polly. And thank you to the South Asia Studies Group at Oxford for this kind invitation. 16 00:02:06,370 --> 00:02:15,070 It's a hard thing to give a book talk. This is probably the sixth or seventh time that I am speaking about the book. 17 00:02:15,070 --> 00:02:23,350 And every time it's a cherished opportunity. So I really appreciate the audience. 18 00:02:23,350 --> 00:02:31,750 The book is titled Delusional States. I'm not sure if you can see feeling rule and development in Pakistan's northern frontier. 19 00:02:31,750 --> 00:02:43,570 And it looks at the part of Pakistani administered Kashmir called Gilgit, Pakistan, which is internationally considered a spot of disputed Kashmir. 20 00:02:43,570 --> 00:02:51,520 As many of you know, India and Pakistan have fought several wars over the territory of Kashmir. 21 00:02:51,520 --> 00:02:56,290 And what has often happened is that the identities, 22 00:02:56,290 --> 00:03:01,030 the cultural politics and the social struggles of people on the ground have been 23 00:03:01,030 --> 00:03:10,330 marginalised in the overall framing of the dispute as a bipartisan two party dispute. 24 00:03:10,330 --> 00:03:22,450 So the book is part of a larger gershuni studies, Kashmiri scholarship, growing body of research, growing body of, 25 00:03:22,450 --> 00:03:30,130 I would say, scholarly activist work, which is trying to break the intellectual line of control. 26 00:03:30,130 --> 00:03:38,290 There was a time, but there was very little conversation across the line of control between scholars who work on both sides. 27 00:03:38,290 --> 00:03:51,850 So I hope that the book makes a contribution to not just gig in Pakistan, which is an understudied place in the larger dispute of Kashmir, 28 00:03:51,850 --> 00:04:02,770 but also in our critical understanding of nationalism, state formation, development and resistance in South Asia broadly. 29 00:04:02,770 --> 00:04:11,800 One caveat before I go into the details of the doc is that often in South Asia settings, because this is a South Asia seminar, 30 00:04:11,800 --> 00:04:22,030 I'm going to use the opportunity to say that Kashmir has often been at the margins of conversations in South Asia studies. 31 00:04:22,030 --> 00:04:25,780 It's seen as this either political science topic for the longest time. 32 00:04:25,780 --> 00:04:30,580 It would seem like that, or maybe in border studies. 33 00:04:30,580 --> 00:04:40,450 I have distinct memories of going to South Asia conferences where a group of us were referred to as the Kashmir folk as if. 34 00:04:40,450 --> 00:04:47,320 If we look at or if we work on Kashmir, it's necessarily just about the Kashmir conflict. 35 00:04:47,320 --> 00:04:54,580 And there is a resistance, intellectual and political, to to discussing Kashmir. 36 00:04:54,580 --> 00:05:01,270 Even in academic settings, because it's a it's an emotionally fraught topic. 37 00:05:01,270 --> 00:05:10,890 And my book addresses that, what is often known as the heart of hostility or the emotional. 38 00:05:10,890 --> 00:05:16,020 We in which particularly Indians and Pakistanis get about Ashmead. 39 00:05:16,020 --> 00:05:25,710 And it looks at the emotions at stake on the ground within people who have been most marginalised 40 00:05:25,710 --> 00:05:33,960 and repressed as a result of this so-called national security issue in India and Pakistan. 41 00:05:33,960 --> 00:05:41,040 So the point I want to make is that the book is not just about Pakistan or Kashmir studies. 42 00:05:41,040 --> 00:05:49,620 Our work as scholars off and on ASHMEAD is about challenging South Asian studies. 43 00:05:49,620 --> 00:05:54,270 It's about challenging nationalism through the lens of occupation. 44 00:05:54,270 --> 00:06:00,810 It's about seeing the Pakistani state and Indian state for what they reveal. 45 00:06:00,810 --> 00:06:12,390 In parts of Kashmir and now what we see in India and Pakistan is actually a dynamic that a lot of us have been seeing in Kashmir for a very long time. 46 00:06:12,390 --> 00:06:19,650 So this is just to say that the centrality of the region is not just because it's a region. 47 00:06:19,650 --> 00:06:26,250 It should not just be regionalised, but because of the militarisation of citizenship that is unveiled. 48 00:06:26,250 --> 00:06:34,470 There has become a model, sadly, for what the states are doing in India and Pakistan. 49 00:06:34,470 --> 00:06:48,960 So with that, I'll start the slides. I hope that's visible. 50 00:06:48,960 --> 00:06:57,390 Polly, can you see the slides? Fine. They're not sure if you were on mute, but I hope I hope people can see. 51 00:06:57,390 --> 00:07:05,350 And I didn't begin with the words from a giggity point and I read it in the first Zoubi 52 00:07:05,350 --> 00:07:12,660 uncle may not be a B lagom showed the immediate lucht data that showed the Ghil'ad, 53 00:07:12,660 --> 00:07:17,030 but Jacek Edelsten knew he had Beja this ADC. 54 00:07:17,030 --> 00:07:21,190 How may. Toward the end of Eatock of owning Dogood. 55 00:07:21,190 --> 00:07:24,890 Okay. Huh. I beat the heck of I mean dogood thinking. 56 00:07:24,890 --> 00:07:30,310 Huh. Well agenda up not news child dia. 57 00:07:30,310 --> 00:07:34,510 I've let my tongue loose from now on, ruler of the time. 58 00:07:34,510 --> 00:07:39,040 I've stopped respecting you. From now on. Am I right in complaining or. 59 00:07:39,040 --> 00:07:43,570 No, my friends. Half a century and we are still in jeans. 60 00:07:43,570 --> 00:07:51,670 The laws of dog laws still prevail here. They have long gone, but their system remains. 61 00:07:51,670 --> 00:07:58,660 I start with the poetic medium because attending poetry festivals in Gilgit, 62 00:07:58,660 --> 00:08:06,520 Pakistan soon showed to me the kind of creative resistances that people in a heavily 63 00:08:06,520 --> 00:08:14,380 militarised and Soviet context resort to to express their feelings about the state. 64 00:08:14,380 --> 00:08:26,650 So a central argument of my book is attending to the oral poetic as a lens on citizenship and as a lens on the felt experience of the state. 65 00:08:26,650 --> 00:08:36,760 Often when we look at studies of power and rule. We fail to ask, how is Ruth felt? 66 00:08:36,760 --> 00:08:46,120 How is rule embodied? What are the feelings, thoughts to which people understand citizenship, 67 00:08:46,120 --> 00:08:54,010 and that was the question that I was driven to explore while I was doing ethnographic fieldwork. 68 00:08:54,010 --> 00:08:59,110 So my fieldwork continues to most. 69 00:08:59,110 --> 00:09:03,130 It was in the region called in Pakistan. 70 00:09:03,130 --> 00:09:09,340 It is bordered by Afghanistan, China, the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. 71 00:09:09,340 --> 00:09:15,190 And specifically, I worked in the city of Gilgit and the village of Shimshon. 72 00:09:15,190 --> 00:09:25,060 So Gilgit and Shimshon are both marked. This map is quite interesting because I've kind of invisible lazed India and Pakistan from 73 00:09:25,060 --> 00:09:34,360 it after the invisible ization that the region has experienced in security paradigms, 74 00:09:34,360 --> 00:09:39,730 in nationalisms in both states. So this is the region. 75 00:09:39,730 --> 00:09:44,980 It's the only Shia majority part of Sunni dominated Pakistan. 76 00:09:44,980 --> 00:09:52,810 It is an ecologically sensitive climactic zone with several grey violent species. 77 00:09:52,810 --> 00:10:00,480 It's considered as a global biodiversity hotspot. It's home to many glaciers and mountain peaks. 78 00:10:00,480 --> 00:10:07,390 We get to that in a bit. It's also a key site of the China Pakistan economic corridor, 79 00:10:07,390 --> 00:10:16,360 which is a multibillion dollar infrastructure development and political project that is engulfing all of Pakistan. 80 00:10:16,360 --> 00:10:20,500 And it is centrally located in Gilgit, Pakistan. 81 00:10:20,500 --> 00:10:24,480 So, again, Pakistan is the site of. 82 00:10:24,480 --> 00:10:35,420 You know, people here are reduced to not just marginality and disenfranchised my disenfranchisement due to being part of the Kashmir issue, 83 00:10:35,420 --> 00:10:42,710 but also they are seen as religious subjects, border subjects, as well as development subjects. 84 00:10:42,710 --> 00:10:52,700 And the question that the book asks is, how is rule accomplished in in such a space? 85 00:10:52,700 --> 00:10:59,360 I'll begin with zooming out a little bit and talk about the cash. 86 00:10:59,360 --> 00:11:06,020 The framing of cash need within India and Pakistan. What I call effective histories of Kashmir. 87 00:11:06,020 --> 00:11:13,160 So fish meat is the essence and rationale for so much politics and for ideologies in India and Pakistan. 88 00:11:13,160 --> 00:11:14,810 We all know that. 89 00:11:14,810 --> 00:11:26,940 But what is very interesting is, is the bodily harm is the bodily vocabulary and occupying mindset in in nationalisms in both countries. 90 00:11:26,940 --> 00:11:38,180 I think ever since I was three years old, I was told that you need is the shy duck or jugular vein or, you know, Kashmir is in our bloods. 91 00:11:38,180 --> 00:11:48,590 So and in India, the reference to Kashmir is often with the word acute oung, which is the inseparable part limned or organ of the body. 92 00:11:48,590 --> 00:11:50,140 And they are contrasting positions. 93 00:11:50,140 --> 00:11:57,440 Obviously, the Indian states and Pakistani state in relation to Kashmir, in relation to even different parts of Kashmir. 94 00:11:57,440 --> 00:12:03,170 I won't have time to go into that right now. But what is common. 95 00:12:03,170 --> 00:12:13,460 I want to talk about what is common is if this flesh and body proprietory niece in the weakish meat is talked about as Llyn 96 00:12:13,460 --> 00:12:24,800 Organ and Vene and I connected to the way in which feminists in Pakistan talk about how they are reduced to flesh and body. 97 00:12:24,800 --> 00:12:33,710 So I started thinking more and more about the masculinist discourse that underlines fascist ideologies of occupation, 98 00:12:33,710 --> 00:12:37,910 which are at the core of South Asian nationalisms. 99 00:12:37,910 --> 00:12:46,910 Even the language of key players and great game, which is often used to describe gig in Pakistan, is a very masculinist language. 100 00:12:46,910 --> 00:12:52,130 So I just wanted to draw attention to how. 101 00:12:52,130 --> 00:12:58,250 Yes, you know, there is a communalist paradigm or, you know, there's a nationalist paradigm, there's a security paradigm. 102 00:12:58,250 --> 00:13:07,220 But the commonality from a feminist perspective is this masculinist rhetoric of occupation and talk and Shaddock, 103 00:13:07,220 --> 00:13:11,420 because in the name of the fishmeal call, in the name of the Kashmir cause, 104 00:13:11,420 --> 00:13:16,970 what is happening is that both countries are annihilating ashmead evil and self annihilating, 105 00:13:16,970 --> 00:13:27,400 too, with regional proxy wars in Afghanistan and Baluchistan. 106 00:13:27,400 --> 00:13:36,520 So now I'll shift to get this done. So within the larger, very toxic nationalistic paradigms of India and Pakistan. 107 00:13:36,520 --> 00:13:47,740 Give Pakistan is a curious is a curious space because within the Pakistani national imagination. 108 00:13:47,740 --> 00:13:52,630 The area was formerly known as the northern areas, the federally administered northern areas, 109 00:13:52,630 --> 00:13:57,460 and it's literally reduced to its mountains and glaciers. 110 00:13:57,460 --> 00:14:03,450 So it's an idyllic natural landscape, you know, talked about to the Karakoram Highway, 111 00:14:03,450 --> 00:14:10,990 to its bigos, through its gemstones in our geography books, growing up in Karachi, in Lahore. 112 00:14:10,990 --> 00:14:14,920 It almost melded into the physical landscape of Pakistan. 113 00:14:14,920 --> 00:14:19,930 And I argue in my book is that this contributes to unseen. 114 00:14:19,930 --> 00:14:25,390 The people of the police because the place is really reduced to an abstract space that 115 00:14:25,390 --> 00:14:32,740 is on peopled and becomes seen only through an urban bourgeois tourist imaginary, 116 00:14:32,740 --> 00:14:40,030 but also through a very strange geological geographical imagination. 117 00:14:40,030 --> 00:14:52,390 And what I argue following it, I forget the author's name Winnie chicle on the way he has theorised that G.O. body of the nation. 118 00:14:52,390 --> 00:15:03,730 I argue that killing in Pakistan is produced as the equal body of the nation in a way of reducing it to ecological essence and epitome. 119 00:15:03,730 --> 00:15:07,720 Even the name northern areas, which during my fieldwork the name was changed. 120 00:15:07,720 --> 00:15:11,800 Somewhere in the middle of it is a very cryptic geographical label. 121 00:15:11,800 --> 00:15:20,950 So somewhere in the middle of the last decade, with heightened tourism from rest of Pakistan and the name change, people realise what this place is. 122 00:15:20,950 --> 00:15:27,190 But as I go to describe in the book the legibility of the region, 123 00:15:27,190 --> 00:15:39,910 was it it's estranged and invisibly sized in remarkably colonial vs both to name through textbooks, to mapping and through the census. 124 00:15:39,910 --> 00:15:43,480 And what I argue, again, I won't be able to go into too much detail. 125 00:15:43,480 --> 00:15:50,740 But just to hint at what the fourth chapter is about is how the region itself is produced as an effect. 126 00:15:50,740 --> 00:15:54,970 Two narratives of beauty. The last chapter looks at narratives of terror. 127 00:15:54,970 --> 00:16:02,470 Again, not part of this particular talk, but I wanted to talk about reducing the region to an affect. 128 00:16:02,470 --> 00:16:19,250 It's reducing a region. To certain feelings of awe and wonder and desire, territorial desire that shape how one sees sensor's and Gristedes a region. 129 00:16:19,250 --> 00:16:26,600 So that's that's about how the region is produced within the Pakistani nationalist imaginary. 130 00:16:26,600 --> 00:16:34,130 What is interesting is that within the region, it's ruled like an internal security zone, 131 00:16:34,130 --> 00:16:39,990 which is quite eclipsed in in the terrorist kind of portrayal of the region. 132 00:16:39,990 --> 00:16:56,390 Excuse me. One word that was often used in my fieldwork and was also the sub line in a local newspaper in it is sort of the meaning behind, 133 00:16:56,390 --> 00:17:02,990 which means my land without the Constitution. So, Gilligan, Pakistan is permanently in between. 134 00:17:02,990 --> 00:17:06,410 It does not have a defined constitutional status within Pakistan. 135 00:17:06,410 --> 00:17:16,600 And for the longest time it was illegible within the Pakistani administrative paraphernalia is where they did not know how to deal with this region. 136 00:17:16,600 --> 00:17:23,240 Its judicial system, its political representative system is is neither here nor there. 137 00:17:23,240 --> 00:17:29,320 Its ruled, for the most part directly from Islamabad and is mostly militarily controlled. 138 00:17:29,320 --> 00:17:35,030 So. So does that mean it be? I mean, was the rallying cry off of people in the region? 139 00:17:35,030 --> 00:17:42,710 And we see now with the PMI army in India, with the BDM movement in Pakistan, 140 00:17:42,710 --> 00:17:53,900 how the very basic fundamental document and relationship between state and citizen is at stake. 141 00:17:53,900 --> 00:17:58,820 So a lot of India in Pakistan feels like it's without the Constitution. 142 00:17:58,820 --> 00:18:03,920 And that's what I meant earlier about many of the dynamics that I saw in Pakistan 143 00:18:03,920 --> 00:18:13,200 during my fieldwork are now resonating across across the South Asian landscape. 144 00:18:13,200 --> 00:18:22,590 So what is ironic, perhaps, is that although the son has had this in limbo status. 145 00:18:22,590 --> 00:18:27,870 What I was struck by is how people expressed their connexion to Pakistan in 146 00:18:27,870 --> 00:18:35,700 terms of Mahabad love Toka means bitter real beauty distance and Bayville fight, 147 00:18:35,700 --> 00:18:39,360 which is again disloyalty and betrayal. 148 00:18:39,360 --> 00:18:49,080 One refrain, for example, which was often used in protest and in my interviews is Pakistani Hamadi SS Outguess Archila. 149 00:18:49,080 --> 00:18:54,120 Pakistan has played with slash manipulated our emotions. 150 00:18:54,120 --> 00:19:04,050 So emotions is not just sort of an intellectual sort of theoretical apparatus that I'm using to to understand it in Pakistan. 151 00:19:04,050 --> 00:19:15,120 It was actually in my fieldwork, in my notes, SAS, which is emotions and feelings, were constantly talked about the feeling of alienation, 152 00:19:15,120 --> 00:19:26,760 the feeling of silencing what's talked about, not just in legalistic terms that we don't have rights and, you know, certain acts are unconstitutional. 153 00:19:26,760 --> 00:19:37,380 But citizenship as as as intimate betrayal of the solidarity that can give Pakistanis should ostensibly show to the region. 154 00:19:37,380 --> 00:19:51,860 In 1947, when they opted for a Muslim Pakistan as opposed to Hindu dominated Kashmir or India, Pakistan has a lot of soldiers from the region as well. 155 00:19:51,860 --> 00:20:01,710 And so this is also, you know, this dynamic would also be used to tell me, for example, we are the most loyal citizens. 156 00:20:01,710 --> 00:20:06,600 We have sacrificed our life for Pakistan. And yet look at what Pakistan does. 157 00:20:06,600 --> 00:20:11,850 Pakistan just manipulates us. I want to take this manipulation seriously. 158 00:20:11,850 --> 00:20:21,060 And what I argue is that Pakistan seemed from gigged Pakistani citizens subjects in bodgies as a state of manipulated love. 159 00:20:21,060 --> 00:20:30,850 So love becomes and this I'm talking about love as as political subjectivity. 160 00:20:30,850 --> 00:20:35,050 And love as attachment to a social and ecological space. 161 00:20:35,050 --> 00:20:43,080 Again, I won't have time to go into this, but I want to hint at how. 162 00:20:43,080 --> 00:20:51,990 Important. It is, and how interesting it has been for me to understand the geneology of love as a political emotion in South Asia. 163 00:20:51,990 --> 00:20:56,400 So I trace it to popular culture in South Asia. 164 00:20:56,400 --> 00:21:05,160 Stories of heat on just as people know Sony, my VONNE have always been metaphor's for more than human couple love. 165 00:21:05,160 --> 00:21:09,360 It's been about patriarchal authority. It's been about priestly authority. 166 00:21:09,360 --> 00:21:16,110 It's been about challenging power. And I connect that to what is happening in G.B. 167 00:21:16,110 --> 00:21:23,340 And the resistance's that I look in the book are also kind of subterranean, nearly political. 168 00:21:23,340 --> 00:21:32,880 So I look at resistance's that are often not paid attention to specially poetic activism, education and social movements and ecological resistance. 169 00:21:32,880 --> 00:21:43,680 And I talk about two of them in the stock. But first, so I've been talking about the second part of the title in the book, 170 00:21:43,680 --> 00:21:49,770 Feeling Rule, and why it's important to think about how a rule is felt. 171 00:21:49,770 --> 00:21:54,600 What is the emotional logic of oppression and of power? 172 00:21:54,600 --> 00:22:05,940 And this is significant even on the other side of Kashmir. Cyber Burma has a peace in which she called the Kashmiri as seeing being Brackett's. 173 00:22:05,940 --> 00:22:18,480 Indians do not feel or represent our sentiments. I have a message here. 174 00:22:18,480 --> 00:22:24,840 OK, you can see my slides. I just saw that message. Thank you. So delusional states. 175 00:22:24,840 --> 00:22:29,220 I am essentially talking about Pakistan and the US as delusional states, 176 00:22:29,220 --> 00:22:36,690 but we can look at this theoretical frame being more broadly in South Asia and beyond as well. 177 00:22:36,690 --> 00:22:44,610 When it comes to thinking about the state from the perspective of its border militarised regions and the most militarised terrain on the planet, 178 00:22:44,610 --> 00:22:49,660 really the word in Audu is very upset. 179 00:22:49,660 --> 00:22:57,130 And it would be amazing that he, I said, would be described as foolish, as stupid, as debased. 180 00:22:57,130 --> 00:23:03,750 I said destructive, as exceptionally arrogant, as paranoid, as hyper intelligent sized. 181 00:23:03,750 --> 00:23:07,830 For example, I would be often told Yahud do scrub and adjusting his hair. 182 00:23:07,830 --> 00:23:11,910 Every other person is a spy. I mean, I would think this is an exaggeration. 183 00:23:11,910 --> 00:23:25,650 Come on. Can we. It can be like that. And very soon I realised the extent of the overdeveloped intelligence state in Pakistan, especially in G.B. 184 00:23:25,650 --> 00:23:29,250 This is between 2005 and 2007 particularly. 185 00:23:29,250 --> 00:23:36,060 So right now it's it's far worse all over Pakistan and India as well. 186 00:23:36,060 --> 00:23:52,430 And. What is really interesting in terms of understanding this regime of intimidation and violence that is imposed on border regions, is that it also? 187 00:23:52,430 --> 00:23:55,940 Reaches the realm of the absurd in many ways. 188 00:23:55,940 --> 00:24:06,110 So, for example, and I say this in the book, that a group of special children take part in the Special Children Olympics in India and a non-profit 189 00:24:06,110 --> 00:24:11,600 organisation that sent them was visited by one of the intelligence agencies several times saying, 190 00:24:11,600 --> 00:24:15,410 why did you send these special children to India? What was your purpose? 191 00:24:15,410 --> 00:24:23,270 Who do you work for? And we have countless stories of pigeons being arrested and monkeys being arrested and, 192 00:24:23,270 --> 00:24:33,170 you know, crazy dynamics off of intelligence sized approach to politics. 193 00:24:33,170 --> 00:24:37,280 Another example is, you know, 194 00:24:37,280 --> 00:24:46,340 a non-profit organisation was doing workshops on early childhood education and talking about multiple intelligences of the child, 195 00:24:46,340 --> 00:24:53,400 how to develop multiple intelligences in a child. And there was a spy sitting in the audience saying, why are you talking about intelligence? 196 00:24:53,400 --> 00:24:58,130 You said, no, we're talking about multiple intelligences. And he's like, you're talking about the intelligence. 197 00:24:58,130 --> 00:25:03,110 So it's irrational beyond imagination. 198 00:25:03,110 --> 00:25:11,000 And those who suffer on the ground obviously deal with it with humour, but deal with it with a lot of pain and anguish. 199 00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:21,890 And my theoretical intervention here is that delusion, characterised particularly by highly militarised societies, 200 00:25:21,890 --> 00:25:29,240 is a key feature of the modern state, particularly in the context of the so-called war on terror. 201 00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:34,220 And here I'm drawing upon the work of a lot of curity of state making, 202 00:25:34,220 --> 00:25:42,800 and it takes fantasy seriously the kind of fantastic imaginations off of stage projects and of the state itself as a fantasy. 203 00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:48,770 But I think both the war on terror and the regimes of terror and what it enabled in South 204 00:25:48,770 --> 00:25:56,060 Asia and also the on the ground reflections about the state being arrogant and paranoid. 205 00:25:56,060 --> 00:26:02,000 And the examples that I was being quoted made me think differently about state making in South Asia. 206 00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:06,980 So I'm McLintock is is a is an amazing feminist terrorist. 207 00:26:06,980 --> 00:26:17,840 And her work on paranoid and bile is used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as exceptional prisons where 208 00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:25,820 U.S. and byul engages in fantasies of global omnipotence combined with nightmares of impending attack. 209 00:26:25,820 --> 00:26:29,300 And when I read that, I immediately thought about Pakistan. You know, 210 00:26:29,300 --> 00:26:33,620 there's a way in which she talks about the grand deal or omnipotence and belief that 211 00:26:33,620 --> 00:26:39,650 everybody's suspect and the state is constantly threatened by internal and external enemies. 212 00:26:39,650 --> 00:26:47,600 She's talking about the US empire and extraordinary prisons. And I argue and she calls them Shadowlands of Empire. 213 00:26:47,600 --> 00:26:54,290 And I argue that Pakistan has been a shadow land of empires since the Cold War. 214 00:26:54,290 --> 00:27:00,350 And this is where I use Philip McMichaels Inc comparison framework to look at state 215 00:27:00,350 --> 00:27:06,770 making transnationally and not catalyse Pakistan in the Middle East and South Asia, 216 00:27:06,770 --> 00:27:18,110 because theoretically, the US state and the Pakistani state have interlinked dynamics of military and intelligence state power. 217 00:27:18,110 --> 00:27:22,700 So there's a logic that we have to reduce Pakistan to South Asia and increasingly the Middle East. 218 00:27:22,700 --> 00:27:27,020 And then the comparative framework can only be in the so-called Third World. 219 00:27:27,020 --> 00:27:40,100 It's something I'm also I'm also challenging your by looking at a transnational analysis of Empire and State as both mutually delusional. 220 00:27:40,100 --> 00:27:48,490 Just to give you an example of the kind of surveillance and suspicion that could get Pakistanis expressed to me and here I, 221 00:27:48,490 --> 00:27:56,180 I wish to thank the journalists, the political workers, the activists, the politicians, 222 00:27:56,180 --> 00:28:05,960 the students, the faculty members who sometimes with risk to themselves really aided me in research over a period of nine months, 223 00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:12,380 over over several years in in a context that has only become worse for researchers. 224 00:28:12,380 --> 00:28:17,270 And I can talk about about that reality and what that means for scholars today. 225 00:28:17,270 --> 00:28:25,130 Later in Q&A, if it comes up, so are journalist. Maybe she adds, it is like top control. 226 00:28:25,130 --> 00:28:29,870 So many of us live in feel and are free to freely discuss anything in public. 227 00:28:29,870 --> 00:28:38,030 What if there's a spy around? Last week when I sent a report about the region to a newspaper in Down Country under a pseudonym. 228 00:28:38,030 --> 00:28:44,240 I first got a threatening warning on phone, then through an agent who came to my house. 229 00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:51,090 They do this to remind us that they know they're reading when our families are these, Katja. 230 00:28:51,090 --> 00:28:59,630 Scuse me, debased pressure is brutal. We have to ask who benefits from this system? 231 00:28:59,630 --> 00:29:03,530 By denying us our rights and holding us in fear and suspicion, 232 00:29:03,530 --> 00:29:11,720 it is the military establishment that benefits because they want to maintain their unchecked privileges. 233 00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:15,500 So the production of Gielgud Pakistan as an untrustworthy, 234 00:29:15,500 --> 00:29:24,800 treacherous space vs. the love and longing and alienation and betrayed expectations that Gilger, 235 00:29:24,800 --> 00:29:32,960 both the Stani subjects expressed to me is the kind of overlapping, overflowing emotional terrain. 236 00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:42,520 Part of that emotional terrain that I chart in the book. 237 00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:47,890 I'm going to quickly go over this because I do want to cover the poetic and ecological resistance, 238 00:29:47,890 --> 00:29:57,100 but two of the chapters in the book look at the routinisation of Intersect resentment and sectarian ization in this town. 239 00:29:57,100 --> 00:30:06,460 And here again, I connect Empire Nation and Region and offer a transnational analysis of Shia marginalisation, 240 00:30:06,460 --> 00:30:17,340 as well as an educational social movement that at least tried to challenge the sectarian project off of national Islam. 241 00:30:17,340 --> 00:30:25,230 And the argument that I make here regarding delusional states is that it's not the subjects in Pakistan are suspected. 242 00:30:25,230 --> 00:30:28,440 It's also and this is a very significant point, 243 00:30:28,440 --> 00:30:36,360 is that state making in the region produces suspicious subjects along sectarian lines or in other parts, 244 00:30:36,360 --> 00:30:44,700 maybe along ethnic lines, to divide and conquer colonial practises that disrupt regional political solidarity. 245 00:30:44,700 --> 00:30:49,890 And this would often be referred to as calculated disorder short of a conflict. 246 00:30:49,890 --> 00:30:59,290 So the idea is that by sectarian not using space, the people it but the sun are rendered. 247 00:30:59,290 --> 00:31:04,260 I rendered irrational subjects or to sectarian brimming with sectarian emotion. 248 00:31:04,260 --> 00:31:14,990 And again, this kind of religious sensibilities of people is used to reinforce apparently a neutral law and order state. 249 00:31:14,990 --> 00:31:20,880 But we all know that the military state is sponsoring the sectarian elements as well. 250 00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:31,430 So that's the kind of dynamic that I chopped in in two of the chapters in the book. 251 00:31:31,430 --> 00:31:37,790 One aspect of resistance, and then I'll just end with that, I won't have time to talk about the boy dick aspect. 252 00:31:37,790 --> 00:31:42,230 Too much is is biodiversity conservation. 253 00:31:42,230 --> 00:31:48,500 So as I mentioned earlier, Gilbert, Boston is home to several great wildlife species. 254 00:31:48,500 --> 00:32:04,790 And since the 1970s has been an object of ethic and desire, not just by national Pakistani subjects for their romantic ideas of Idlib landscapes and, 255 00:32:04,790 --> 00:32:10,610 you know, to response, but also by international conservation organisations. 256 00:32:10,610 --> 00:32:18,710 With respect to the biodiversity of the area and the reduction of biodiversity and local 257 00:32:18,710 --> 00:32:25,370 ownership and indigenous life was to protected areas in the form of national parks, 258 00:32:25,370 --> 00:32:31,630 wildlife sanctuaries, game reserves and hunting areas. I would often be told, for example, that can get. 259 00:32:31,630 --> 00:32:34,910 But this town is a living museum for wildlife. 260 00:32:34,910 --> 00:32:46,010 And this juxtaposition of how present concern for wildlife is as opposed to people was not left uncommanded in in my research. 261 00:32:46,010 --> 00:32:50,270 I want to also highlight that recently, over the last two months, 262 00:32:50,270 --> 00:32:57,290 two new books have been notified and announced and imposed without consultation from people. 263 00:32:57,290 --> 00:33:07,040 And it again reduces the region to this empty landscape, which is already there in National. 264 00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:14,600 It's already a national product and a national object. And now it's also an international object because of its. 265 00:33:14,600 --> 00:33:23,510 It's my life. So I problematise catalist notions of conservation and argue that Western notions of conservation that have 266 00:33:23,510 --> 00:33:30,410 been implemented in GIBI are rooted in by capitalist fantasies and imposed notions of empty landscapes. 267 00:33:30,410 --> 00:33:39,050 And I contrast the emotion of saving nature of compassion that is seen as the apex of effective agency, 268 00:33:39,050 --> 00:33:50,090 as opposed to local understandings of ghodrat or inbuilt mechanisms off of conservation in the region to indigenous practises. 269 00:33:50,090 --> 00:33:55,850 Again, sorry, I'm rushing. I won't have time to talk about this. 270 00:33:55,850 --> 00:34:02,390 But I'll talk I'll just mention that the Shimshon Nature Trust, which I present a case study of, 271 00:34:02,390 --> 00:34:09,530 offers an epistemic challenge to the theory and practise of global biodiversity conservation 272 00:34:09,530 --> 00:34:15,290 by challenging its fundamental tenet that that we don't believe in national parks. 273 00:34:15,290 --> 00:34:19,280 We believe in ecological sovereignty. We even own the land. 274 00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:25,220 And you participate. Why should there be community participation when you are the guests? 275 00:34:25,220 --> 00:34:30,470 You should learn from us. So there is a reversal of dynamic here. 276 00:34:30,470 --> 00:34:35,450 There's a reversal of dynamic in many ways in which people assert their dignity, 277 00:34:35,450 --> 00:34:45,770 assert their right to livelihood and assert their right to right to representation and and democratic and a democratic idea of love. 278 00:34:45,770 --> 00:34:59,030 If you like. So I'm mindful of the time and I and they and we can we can we can highlight other aspects when we have question and answers. 279 00:34:59,030 --> 00:35:06,960 Thank you. OK, I see. 280 00:35:06,960 --> 00:35:13,110 Thank you very much indeed. A most interesting and and intriguing presentation. 281 00:35:13,110 --> 00:35:26,610 I have questions like that came to me almost by the minute as I listened that we've had some questions in from listeners outside Oxford. 282 00:35:26,610 --> 00:35:30,630 Now, can you. Are you able to see them in your chest? 283 00:35:30,630 --> 00:35:36,280 Yes. I'm just. And your chequebooks. 284 00:35:36,280 --> 00:35:40,400 If you ever read them, you can maybe tell me what these are. 285 00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:44,670 Oh, that. You read the president, by the way. I will have a record later. 286 00:35:44,670 --> 00:35:47,130 I'm sorry. I'm just catching up. 287 00:35:47,130 --> 00:35:53,370 So the first question is, I wanted to get back to the arguments you made about changing the frames through which we view. 288 00:35:53,370 --> 00:35:59,970 Bill Gates focussed on the manner in which you shift from the regular nationalism friends as insightful. 289 00:35:59,970 --> 00:36:05,580 I was wondering if it would not be even more productive to play smart in areas like Millgate, 290 00:36:05,580 --> 00:36:15,480 both his son outside the frame of South Asia entirely and inside the historical frames of Asian highlands slash Zamir. 291 00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:20,130 Yeah. Yeah. Should I go ahead and answer it or. 292 00:36:20,130 --> 00:36:25,500 Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Andy. The. That's an excellent question. 293 00:36:25,500 --> 00:36:30,360 I actually in the introduction of the book, I and as well as in the fourth chapter, 294 00:36:30,360 --> 00:36:34,650 I talk about how some people, because of their marginality within Pakistan, 295 00:36:34,650 --> 00:36:46,500 would end their isolation from the mainstream, would sometimes counter their eligibility by telling me and this is an odd case, 296 00:36:46,500 --> 00:36:51,930 this is not necessarily the norm as Central Asian. So so. 297 00:36:51,930 --> 00:36:56,820 So I think I think the fact that it's at the meeting point of Central Asia and South 298 00:36:56,820 --> 00:37:02,250 Asia in in the kind of dominant notions of Central Asia and South Asia is interesting. 299 00:37:02,250 --> 00:37:08,190 But I think all these categories are political categories that are actually linked to the Cold War, 300 00:37:08,190 --> 00:37:11,730 that are actually linked to intellectual production in academia. 301 00:37:11,730 --> 00:37:22,710 So I do see value in the mountain centred discourse, which is across Nipon, across India, across Pakistan, 302 00:37:22,710 --> 00:37:32,290 particularly from an ecological stand point, particularly because of the way in which they have been objects of of dams. 303 00:37:32,290 --> 00:37:43,380 They've been objects of infrastructure projects. And they have resulted in ecological catastrophes in all of these places, including the this. 304 00:37:43,380 --> 00:37:50,760 But I'm not sure about somnia because, yeah, I think people are not trying to run away from from national participation. 305 00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:55,720 They're actually trying to find an egalitarian space within it. 306 00:37:55,720 --> 00:38:01,250 In my opinion, OK? Right. Thank you. So another question. 307 00:38:01,250 --> 00:38:08,830 So this is a this will put you on your mettle. There may be three issues with this paradigm. 308 00:38:08,830 --> 00:38:16,660 Firstly, it misses out on corroboration or contrast from the other side of the line of control. 309 00:38:16,660 --> 00:38:25,510 Second, GDP is neither a homogenous region as you present, nor was it status within the Dogra unprincipled state of JDK. 310 00:38:25,510 --> 00:38:31,450 So clear cut. Well, may I just interrupt? I just had to read the whole. 311 00:38:31,450 --> 00:38:36,310 You've written it. Fantastic. Excellent. I've published. I should be able to see it. 312 00:38:36,310 --> 00:38:39,640 This is a very short talk. It's a 300 page book. 313 00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:44,080 I will not be able to address history and. 314 00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:50,270 Yeah. And I yeah. I am not trying to say anything about the other side of it. 315 00:38:50,270 --> 00:38:53,590 You seem to stop so we can move on to the next question. No, no, no. 316 00:38:53,590 --> 00:38:59,160 I mean there. I completely take you know, this is a very contentious topic and people will be wanting or all want. 317 00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:03,700 Fine. I just I like related things which are not actually. 318 00:39:03,700 --> 00:39:19,800 What do you have to judge about? So I think that there are one or two that wanted to other sort of observations, that kind of more observations, 319 00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:28,340 you know, or questions that are not really quite pertinent to what you are trying to do, as I said. 320 00:39:28,340 --> 00:39:32,140 Well, was we just wait to see if anyone else wants to come in. 321 00:39:32,140 --> 00:39:38,530 I wonder if you would put up with a question from me, which is, you know, I looked you know, 322 00:39:38,530 --> 00:39:47,560 I was actually fascinated by the early on in your talk, the way in which you explored themes of the body. 323 00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:57,010 You know, the veins authorities have, Lindze, in the way in which a Kashmir in particular is represented. 324 00:39:57,010 --> 00:40:05,530 And, of course, you know, do you draw the connexion with the sort of eco body that the sort of urban bourgeois tourists figure imagines? 325 00:40:05,530 --> 00:40:12,940 And you make the connexion between the sort of gendered and masculine imagery 326 00:40:12,940 --> 00:40:19,750 that you see coming from Pakistan and in particular in the act of mapping. 327 00:40:19,750 --> 00:40:28,630 And, of course, in in modern discourses of nationalism, we are, as you know, we all know, 328 00:40:28,630 --> 00:40:38,230 we're very used to seeing links drawn between the nation, blood, soil and so on. 329 00:40:38,230 --> 00:40:42,130 But there is also an older discourse. 330 00:40:42,130 --> 00:40:46,390 And I wonder whether this is something that you thought about. 331 00:40:46,390 --> 00:40:57,040 I'm sure sure you will have done. There is, of course, an older discourse across the subcontinent which is rooted in humoral theory. 332 00:40:57,040 --> 00:41:09,280 You know, the idea that the idea that that states are like bodies, that different communities within a polar tier like its limbs, you know, 333 00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:14,890 that the health of the Politti is established through a correct balance between 334 00:41:14,890 --> 00:41:22,330 its various Linton's and these these understandings of the humoral body are, 335 00:41:22,330 --> 00:41:38,740 of course, have very similar, in fact, parallel lives within the sort of India within the Indic tradition and in the in the Muslim tradition. 336 00:41:38,740 --> 00:41:53,890 I mean, they you know, it's there, for example, in Abu Fasel in India, then in Vedic accounts, how societies sprang from the body of the primal man. 337 00:41:53,890 --> 00:42:05,750 And of course, it has a much wider. Life in the way in which ordinary communities understood their own bodies and thought about 338 00:42:05,750 --> 00:42:11,390 their health and their health in particular in relation to their own natural environments. 339 00:42:11,390 --> 00:42:21,350 Because the human body has a very intimate relationship, of course, with its natural environment and qualities from one crossover. 340 00:42:21,350 --> 00:42:25,280 And I wonder whether, you know. 341 00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:34,130 Do you see this older history as as laying the ground for a more powerful 342 00:42:34,130 --> 00:42:40,320 expression of the sorts of masculine and patriarchal sense that you talk about, 343 00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:52,910 you know? Or is that perhaps at the level of popular culture, which is what I would expect, a longer term persistence of these relatively on gendered? 344 00:42:52,910 --> 00:42:57,650 It seems to me humoral understandings of the body. Yeah. 345 00:42:57,650 --> 00:43:02,210 But I think. Sorry. That's a fantastic question. 346 00:43:02,210 --> 00:43:05,760 Thank you so much. I just lost my mother in an area. I'm interested in. 347 00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:11,280 And so I wondered if you. That enters into your life. 348 00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:15,410 If I can be really honest. 349 00:43:15,410 --> 00:43:29,400 The kind of nationalistic falvo and the kind of ways in which Gleam took Ashmead is made on both sides is so deeply misogynist that and open, 350 00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:34,680 so attuned to the present, frankly, that would not have the chance to explore these. 351 00:43:34,680 --> 00:43:43,250 Amazing. And it has been done in cashmere studies, the Little League Ashmead as the head in backing of Israel. 352 00:43:43,250 --> 00:43:53,070 Yes. But I think only recently have I looked at the connected histories of of nationalistic occupation. 353 00:43:53,070 --> 00:44:01,780 I mean, I think my interest comes in demilitarising solar energy from its angle. 354 00:44:01,780 --> 00:44:08,550 And. And I think the kind of lines that you are drawing are very significant and have been done. 355 00:44:08,550 --> 00:44:17,010 It's just something I've not thought about. But I think more and more about consent. 356 00:44:17,010 --> 00:44:27,820 The amazing point anthropologist utters the draws connexions between the we bushmeat is currently being even more violently militarised. 357 00:44:27,820 --> 00:44:42,390 So what did you do on the Indian side? With the with the with the meta discourse, with abuse, with notions of full of bodily violence. 358 00:44:42,390 --> 00:44:49,680 Kashmiris do what this violence bodily of. Let's not agree that the body is not just a metaphor. 359 00:44:49,680 --> 00:44:56,250 So either goes and it's a very fascinating question about connecting the violence 360 00:44:56,250 --> 00:45:02,460 done to the body and the violence of the nation at a down to Kashmiri bodies. 361 00:45:02,460 --> 00:45:06,470 Yeah. So what utter Zaghloul is that? McKillip with Kashmiri body. 362 00:45:06,470 --> 00:45:12,150 And so I'm just I'm reminded of a very powerful framing with your with your quest. 363 00:45:12,150 --> 00:45:17,640 Thank you. I shall look forward to reading your book or see you now. 364 00:45:17,640 --> 00:45:23,750 Let me just say. Have any more questions. Come in on the chance. We should look at this. 365 00:45:23,750 --> 00:45:32,100 A pertinent to your talk. This is to move this down. 366 00:45:32,100 --> 00:45:41,630 Do you see. Can you see these? 367 00:45:41,630 --> 00:45:52,550 Yes, I can. I can see this. I don't know whether there's any in particular that you want to try to discuss. 368 00:45:52,550 --> 00:45:58,750 So I'm sorry, but I'm mindful of the time because there is a separate conversation. 369 00:45:58,750 --> 00:46:06,980 Yeah. Yeah. Like you done wrong answers. I really appreciate the questions, but I'm because there are six questions in front of me. 370 00:46:06,980 --> 00:46:14,680 I don't want to either. That's a nice reflection of the interest to you. 371 00:46:14,680 --> 00:46:18,470 We're glad people have joined. Well, shall we? Shall we. 372 00:46:18,470 --> 00:46:23,750 Thank you very much then. And thank those who have joined us from outside Oxford. 373 00:46:23,750 --> 00:46:34,310 I'm sure that the notion is we'd be happy to. Does already conduct scholarly exchanges in many in many ways. 374 00:46:34,310 --> 00:46:40,230 And so mostly we'll log out and then we'll go back into our Oxford discussion. 375 00:46:40,230 --> 00:46:45,290 And if not at all, if Nonnemaker is is has it been able to join us? 376 00:46:45,290 --> 00:47:00,205 She will take the chair. Otherwise, I will be there as well in any case.