Title: Cityscapes of violence in Karachi: publics and counterpublics
Abstract: The new willingness by publishers to enlist the controversies that violence in Karachi entails brings into conversation - in this book - some prominent academics, ethnographers, journalists, writers and activists.This diverse coalition provokes shifts awayfrom recursive academic and media scripts of the city toward a different ‘counter-public’ of cultural and political commentary, as contributors critically unpack the constitutive relation of violence to personal experience and create new understandings that are tentatively shared. The book drills down into the city’s neighbourhoods - to examine ways violence is textured locally and citywide into protest drinking, social and religious movements, class and cosmopolitanism, gang wars, the fractured lives of militants and journalists, uncertain continuua between state political and individual madness, and ways the painful shattering of some worlds produces dreams of others. While the individual chapters each provide fresh insights, the collective ethics of rewriting, rethinking or cajoling Karachi’s landscape into other forms is more dynamic and unclear, and being worked out in public.Chapters are by Nadeem F. Paracha, Laurent Gayer, Zia Ur Rehman, Nida Kirmani, Nichola Khan, Oskar Verkaaik, Arif Hasan, Razeshta Sethna, Asif Farrukhi, Kausar S. Khan, Farzana Shaikh, and Kamran Asdar Ali.They comprise a singular and important contribution for those still spirited to understand what went wrong with Karachi.
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 5
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