Reading Foucault in Karachi

Reading Foucault in Karachi

Reading Foucault in Karachi, one feels compelled to try a similar experiment. Amid the endless bloodletting it is hard indeed to find some sterile modernity exerting some willful but unseen puppetry. The mechanisms of control Foucault was so peeved about are hard to find here; the panopticon and the industrial complex with its working cogs, industrious and silent are not found here. Instead, we have a hate-filled terror, bent on destroying any order that dares impose itself, bomb places of worship, burn down schools, turn down vaccinations and exchange women to settle scores. The conflicts are visible and perpetual, and individual and tribal and ethnic and sectarian. There is no distance from danger here and no alienation from the primal. People kill and die and kill again and it all happens in full view. There is little modernity to be found, if Foucault were alive, perhaps he would love Karachi just as much as he adored Iran before the Revolution.

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