Territory of Desire

Colonialism Otherwise and the Poetics of Solidarity: A Methodological Intervention De‐b/ordering Kashmir

“…Bhan and Duschinki 2020; Ghosh and Duschinki 2020; Kazi 2014; Osuri 2017, 2018; Zia 2019)—and a second local—experienced and lived by elites and subaltern alike in the intimate spaces of subjecthood, affect, and representation (e.g. Aijazi 2018; Kabir 2009; Zutshi 2018). Colonialism otherwise extends the latter strand by developing a method for un/learning colonial knowledge vis‐à‐vis the highly contested spatialised politics of Kashmir as they are governed through and by our bodies as we are enmeshed with state narratives within (Lahore) or outside (London) postcolonial borders.…”

Re-membering: Tracing epistemic implications of feminist and gendered politics under military occupation

“…I read these conceptualisations as politically and theoretically generative as they allow attending to historically specific practices of re-membering that emerge and are practised in the context of women's and feminist activism in Kashmir. Re-membering as an anticolonial praxis places coloniality and colonial relations of powerdistinct in India's relation to Kashmir (Kabir, 2009) at the centre of analysis. As existing literature suggests, re-membering practices are simultaneously embodied and spatio-temporally located in ways that expose coloniality while insisting on epistemic change.…”

“…The political potential of re-membering by anti-disappearance activists is not only limited to staging demonstrations, but also comes through in the variety of representation devices, such as posters, postcards and calendars that the collective puts together. In construing India's relationship to Kashmir as a colonising one, Kabir (2009) shows how, together with the discursive architecture of the state, forms of representation such as films, travel and journalistic photography on Kashmir fetishise the region as an object of feminised desire. While assigning an aura of normality, these representations and their fetishising gaze construe Kashmir as 'integral' to imaginaries of the nation.…”

“…While assigning an aura of normality, these representations and their fetishising gaze construe Kashmir as 'integral' to imaginaries of the nation. Concomitantly, spaces of representation are also where Kashmiris create counterrepresentation and counter-memory (Kabir, 2009;Mushtaq, 2021).…”

“…7. Many scholars have noted how the Indian nationalist imagination of Kashmir has routinely framed the region as a feminised territory for Indian capture and control (Kabir, 2009;Kaul, 2018). Similar narratives became popular after 2019 when the complete capture of Kashmir increased the misogyny against Kashmiri Muslim women (Mushtaq, 2019).…”