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1. Reading Discourses of Power and Violence in Emerging Kashmiri Literature in English: The Collaborator and Curfewed Night

Author:
Amrita Ghosh
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Review of Human Rights
Institution:
Society of Social Science Academics (SSSA)
Abstract:
This essay studies two literary texts on Kashmir, The Collaborator (2011) by Mirza Waheed and Curfewed Night (2010) by Basharat Peer and analyzes the discourses of power, overt forms of violence that the works present. It first contextualizes events from the last three years that have occurred in Kashmir to present forms of violence Kashmiri subjects undergo in the quotidian of life. The essay, thus, argues that the selected literary works represent Kashmir as a unique postcolonial conflict zone that defies an easy terminology to understand the onslaught of violence, and the varied forms of power. As analyzed in the article, one finds a curious merging of biopolitics and necropolitics that constructs the characters as “living dead” within this emergency zone. For this, the theoretical trajectory of the essay is mapped out to show the transition from Foucault and Agamben’s idea of biopolitics to Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics. Thereafter, essay concludes how the two texts illustrate Agamben’s notion of the bare life is not enough to understand subjects living in this unique postcoloniality. The presence of death and the dead bodies go beyond bare life and shows how that bodies become significant signifiers that construct a varied notion of agency.
Topic:
Violence, Literature, Language, Biopolitics, Necropolitics, and Power
Political Geography:
Pakistan, India, and Kashmir

2. Assemblages of Land Loss and Immigration in Film and Literature about the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Author:
David E. Toohey
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Review of Human Rights
Institution:
Society of Social Science Academics (SSSA)
Abstract:
Literature and film that are relevant to a concept of land and immigration that promotes ecologically sustainable and anti-racist visions are analyzed here to create an assemblage, based on Deleuze and Guattari’s theories. This is done to accomplish three tasks. The first is to disrupt misconceptions of a dichotomy between ecological activism and immigrant rights activism. The second task is to address the connections between ecologies and immigration and diaspora communities while taking into account issues of control over land that have often been important to people who immigrate from Central America and Mexico to the United States. As a third task, the idea of assemblage is modified to integrate Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation and Laclau and Mouffe’s idea of discourses of positive and negative activation in discourse to explore Deleuze and Guattari’s theory through a more specific application to situations of political economy that have been so intertwined with immigration, land, and ecology in Central America, Mexico, and the U.S. Southwest. Accordingly, the aim is to illuminate ecological points of view that are from immigrant and diaspora communities, rather than hostile to or imposed upon them.
Topic:
Immigration, Film, Borders, and Literature
Political Geography:
Mexico and United States of America