If the state has been unwilling to fully regard penises and anuses, it has contemplated vaginas even less ably. In these social crevices then, a certain kind of space can flourish outside of the state’s harsh glare.
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Polis
Khwaja Siras and State (Dis)Belief | TQ SALON
Legibility as a Political Project | TQ SALON
The efforts of the Pakistani state in making “Muhajirs” legible through preferential policies did not have the effect of compartmentalizing them into a new discrete identity. To the contrary, it enabled Muhajirs to portray an ethnically neutral “Pakistani” identity.
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From My City to Mega City: Why Does It Matter | Invisible Cities
Invisible Cities | BLOG
The city, as much as it exists in ‘real’ space, is a formation in our minds. Public space then, is an emotional construct in our mind’s eye, laden with ‘meaning’ and association that we attribute to it as observers. Just as the spaces and places we inhabit shape us, we...
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Making Muhajir Politics
MQM politics today thus mediates between the particular, a muhajir identity, and the universal, a national alliance that cuts across ethnic divisions -- a delicate dance that the party performs by engaging in what I call “non-sovereign” politics.
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Why Peshawar Must Not Be Our 9/11
By strengthening the writ of a militarized state, we are making a second Peshawar more, not less, likely.
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Neoliberalism against Privatization
اردو | The Supreme Court’s decision to void the privatization of the Pakistan Steel Mills retained an unsaid pact with capitalist interests even as it seemed to subvert them.
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The Man Who Could
اردو | Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry leaves behind a mixed legacy.
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