and then eventually had to catch up with once far behind Europe. The same time that the possibility of being far ahead is they could show Europe its own limitations. In this, in academia, if you take the same idea, it means the already existing concepts that are operating in the Western academy. Of course, we must engage with them, because that’s the giant shadow under which we’re functioning. Anywhere in the world we inhabit, unfortunately or fortunately, a European world. The same time, we can apply pressure on the categories that have been received, that our states have had to receive, that our societies have had to receive, and even academia. Here, I think it’s quite crucial for a place like Pakistan to become a site of production of something new. There’s already a trend in that direction in the study of on Pakistan cities. There’s something odd about this place when seen from the normal kind of lens. It’s something different. Perhaps seeing it as a lack or as backwards is not the best lens to see it. Perhaps, that awkwardness that we’re calling backwardness has something to tell us about the modern world as such and not just about Pakistan. Think about Islamic republic. There’s that idea. It must do something to the idea of republicanism. Which is such a huge tradition in modern Europe since the 18th century, the idea of sovereignty belonging to God. The entire constitution then saying it follows from the instruction of God, and then that constitution getting suspended every few months or so. God’s sovereignty being suspended every few months! There’s something interesting and odd about it, but that’s definitely a new conception of sovereignty right there. Baluchistan, at one level, you have people being killed by the state in a very sovereign violence where they can be placed outside the floor. At the same time, offenders working on mercenaries or many Baluchi people who are working in Bahrain and Oman in the military and the police. Over there, they’re the ones conducting sovereign violence against Shias and local activists. At once, they are subjects of sovereign violence and objects of sovereign
violence. That of course got something to place and solve the very question of sovereignty. I think the hostile thing, and I’m working on communist thought and the idea of the revolutionary subject changes in a place like Pakistan or India. I think Pakistan gives us this opportunity to not just engage with these global ideas. But also to apply pressure on them so as to actually develop certain new concepts that are not normative. If this starts happening everywhere, not just in Pakistan, and then if the vast majority of the world is deviating from the norm set in 19th century Europe, then eventually we can question the norms, the very norms through which the world is operating. Perhaps, the norm lies elsewhere. In Pakistan, we’ll not be this freakish country, but actually part of the norm that structures our world. There is definitely that universal potential in a place like Pakistan. Already, with India, they have developed subaltern studies, and other ideas that were taken up, all of a sudden became a global hit, precisely because they spoke to this undercurrent, which is both at once the majority, and yet placed in this box of being weird and freakish and a deviation. It’s about time Pakistan’s apparently bizarre kind of politics should turn into something that tells us not just something about Pakistan, but the world as it exists. Farina Mir: Nobody at this table in two days has framed Pakistan in the terms that you just framed it. I’m just struck that you are actually using that framework and referencing Pakistan as backwards...I’m just pointing out the irony of it because actually that has not been the dominant framework of the discussion. Interestingly enough for me, it’s not my own dominant framework at all, of thinking about Pakistan. I’m kind of struck about where that framework itself is coming from, and wondering if we wouldn’t want to query that because I understand 155