The Notion of the “Subaltern” and the Drone Victim Subjectivities in Pakistani Anglophone Fiction

Abstract

This research proposes a new approach to study fictional representation of drone victims in contemporary Anglophone Pakistani novels by examining the inevitable onto-epistemological relation between the notion of the “subaltern” and its possible implications for fictional drone subjectivities. By drawing insights from the newly emerging drone fiction literary theory and re-examining the already well-established tradition of Subaltern Studies, I demonstrate in this essay that the drone fiction written by Pakistani authors is a distinct literary category which configures drone victims as voiceless. I argue that by incorporating the impunity, inhumanity, and injustice inherent in the perpetration of drone warfare, Pakistani authors reimagine the drone victims as mute spectators of their devastation. The essay considers the narrative implications of drone technology’s orientalist, racist, and imperialist rubric in the selected works. A critical analysis of the selected textual excerpts unpacks the socio-political discursive subaltern formations of the fictional drone victim subjectivities such as dead bodies, widows, orphans, and disabled individuals. By unraveling the multiple layers of subjugation and repression embedded into the fictional representations of the drone victims, this essay proposes a possibility to study the precariousness of their situation under the praxis of Subaltern Studies. Moreover, different contexts and types of drone victims unravel the harsh conditions of the groups living under drone surveillance. The motif of drone target strikes allows Pakistani writers to explore the voicelessness of the dronized communities. Hence, in reading drone sufferers as subalterns (a subjugated mute political non-entity), the essay highlights the predicament of the marginalized dronized groups and foregrounds the possible expansion of Subaltern Studies in connection with the exploration of drone victim subjectivities.

keywords:

• Drone fiction
• drone victims
• Pakistani anglophone fiction (PAF)
• subaltern subjectivity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).