Description
A constant use of war-time/(Post) conflict aesthetical representation of women and children etched in materials and in performativity acts in Pakistan alludes to the embodied emotive memory of terrorism and its theatrical subjects. This materialist and imaginative (re)production is a generative of ‘affective components’ that fuels the ‘politics of sacrifice’. This in return serves as a post-war currency for those in positions of prestige: military and its cohort institutions to regenerate its central position as the primary liberator against a ‘vague’ enemy which is attacking the state from both frontiers. This regime of art (visual and discursive) defines the soldier, placing his/her subjectivity at a central stage of prestige. This paper employs critical visual analysis of a statue centered at GHQ-Intersection, Rawalpindi ,Pakistan. This statue is a representation of a wider aesthetic regime at play in the country that sets out to impose an order of uniform armed men protecting the civilian subjects via masculinized and militarized social hierarchy of authority. Employing recent feminist case studies of Maria Rashid (2020) and Shenila Khoja-Molji(2021) this paper combines the ‘aesthetic’ as explored by Jacques Racierè(2004) to explain the formative subjects in (post) conflict settings which is indicative of resurgence of bellicosity in Pakistani society.
