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Title Negotiating the Poetics and Politics of Difference in Post-9/11 Pakistani Poetry: A (Post) Memory Study

Author(s) Mr. Muhammad Numan

Abstract Title: Negotiating the Poetics and Politics of Difference in Post-9/11 Pakistani Poetry: A (Post)Memory Study This research examines the forms, characteristics and thematic concerns of (post)memory of 9/11 and its offshoots in Pakistani poetry produced in the last two decades (2001-2020). During this period, a number of Pakistani poets have translated the events of 9/11 and the subsequent developments such as the ‘War on Terror’ into individual, communal, public, prosthetic and transcultural memories of violence, and determined their own paths to manage the turmoil different from the one witnessed by the post-9/11 American poets. This research negotiates with the poetics and politics of difference while highlighting the polyphonic aesthetic structures of (post)9/11- memory in Pakistani poetry. It entwines trauma, memory, and cultural studies, and scaffolds its argument upon the four concepts of public fantasy, communal memory, identity displacement, and transculturality. Squaring the theoretical canvas, it traces the repercussions of 9/11 beyond trauma in prosthetic contexts. It further maps how natal alienation – a disconnection of historical memory from the cultural context – not only augments mnemohistory in subjectivity but is also indelible in influencing social, political, and territorial contexts of analogical 9/11 memory. Negotiating with vernacular narratives through their poetry by contrasting them with Anglophone poetry, which is widely praised in Pakistan and the world at large, this research provides an indepth understanding of the ways post-9/11 poetic memorials are constructed in Pakistan. Here, within the canvas of memory studies and South Asian studies, the parenthesized ‘(post)’ provides theoretical space to the diversity of Pakistani poetic voices to 9/11 and its offshoots. This research fills the absence of local narratives in the mapping of vernacular and national memories. A detailed glossary of the terms used in this thesis is provided at the end.

Type Thesis/Dissertation

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2025-04-24

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Contributor(s) Prof. Dr. Muhammad Safeer Awan

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