Sovereign Attachments: Masculinity, Muslimness, and Affective Politics in Pakistan

Sovereign Attachments rethinks sovereignty by moving it out of the exclusive domain of geopolitics and legality and into cultural, religious, and gender studies. Through a close reading of a stunning array of cultural texts produced by the Pakistani state and the Pakistan-based Taliban, Shenila Khoja-Moolji theorizes sovereignty as an ongoing attachment that is negotiated in public culture. Both the state and the Taliban recruit publics into relationships of trust, protection, and fraternity by summoning models of Islamic masculinity, mobilizing kinship metaphors, and marshalling affect. In particular, masculinity and Muslimness emerge as salient performances through which sovereign attachments are harnessed. The book shifts the discussion of sovereignty away from questions about absolute dominance to ones about shared repertoires, entanglements, and co-constitution.  

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations  Acknowledgments  Introduction: The Public Lives of Sovereignty  Part One: Sovereign Islamo-Masculinities 1 • Narrating the Sovereign 2 • Identity, Alterity 3 • Competing Sovereigns Part Two: Stylizing Political Attachments 4 • Subordinated Femininities 5 • Kinship Metaphors  6 • Managing Affect  Conclusion: Imbricated Sovereignties  Notes  Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Shenila Khoja-Moolji is Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at Bowdoin College. She is the author of the award-winning book Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia.

Review :
"Khoja-Moolji’s success lies in highlighting the imbrications of sovereignty with religion as well as gender. . . . Sovereign Attachments would be of interest to both undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of international relations, gender and sexuality studies, Islamic studies and Asian studies." "Khoja-Moolji’s book, with its focused context and excellent feminist analysis, illuminates the complex dynamics of sovereignty, forcing the reader to move beyond visible sovereign contests of violence and to consider those contests that occur in the cultural sphere." “Khoja-Moolji presents critical new material that contributes to debates regarding the role of emotion, kinship, and gender in political movements. . . . Sovereign Attachments is a fascinating read” "The interdisciplinary depth and reach of the book make it an impressive contribution to the study of gender, religion, and politics. . . . Khoja-Moolji’s creative, vivid, and nuanced textual analysis provides a convincing bulwark for her central thesis." "The book is a remarkable contribution on how sovereignty is maintained by the Pakistani state and challenged by the Taliban through the performativity of Islamo-masculinity, kinship metaphors and memory in the public culture of Pakistan."    “An interesting and engaging treatise, this book will interest scholars of Islam, gender, politics, and Pakistan.” "Khoja-Moolji’s work is an engaging and well-organized piece of literature that is remarkably relevant to not only understanding Pakistan’s current political landscape, but also today’s international relationships." "Such a masterful takedown of Pakistani visions of masculinity — both state and non-state — makes Khoja-Moolji one of the clearest and most original scholarly voices working at the intersection of politics, South Asia, Islam and cultural and gender studies. . . .An essential read for anyone interested in imagining more hopeful and generous futures."   "Scholars in numerous other fields—postcolonialism, gender, media, and so forth—can benefit from Khoja-Moolji’s game-changing re-theorization of sovereignty and deep investigation." "Khoja-Moolji’s work. . . . makes a significant contribution to the understanding of gender and the contestation of sovereignty in Pakistan and more broadly, Muslim majority contexts." "Those who want to better understand the delicate but resolute efforts employed by the [Pakistani State] and other actors for nurturing consent for violence should grab a copy of Sovereign Attachments." "This ability to simultaneously show the strong hold of the ideas hitherto discussed as well as their fragility, while also ensuring lucid prose and cutting-edge analysis spotlights Shenila Khoja-Moolji as one of the most clear and original scholarly voices working at the intersection of politics, Islam, and cultural and gender studies today." “Sovereign Attachments marks a major leap in our understanding of the performative character of sovereignty itself. The book will be an indispensable guide for graduate students and researchers working on questions of gender, religion, and sovereignty in South Asia and beyond.” "This study of international relations in a cultural-affective register offers great potential to better understand  concepts and the work they do in the world." “Shenila Khoja-Moolji’s Sovereign Attachments…analyzes Pakistan’s political and cultural realities in conversation with the affective turn.”   "Shenila Khoja-Moolji’s Sovereign Attachments is a landmark monograph in the study of Islam in South Asia." "At its core, Khoja-Moojli’s work explores the Pakistani culture wars and the affective attachments they elicit in the public domain as a discursive clash between the Tahrik-e-Taliban (TTP) movement and the Pakistani state."