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1 - The Construction of Afghanistan as a ‘Discursive Regime’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2020

Nivi Manchanda
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
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Summary

Through an analysis of some of the stock tropes (as a pawn in the Great Game, as a space of disease and pathology and as the graveyard of empires) used to describe Afghanistan, and through a close reading of one key text (Afghanistan 101), the first chapter highlights the ways in which a certain essentialised ‘idea’ of Afghanistan has become common-sense and has disguised the need for more serious engagement with the country and its people. The aim of this chapter is to foreground Afghanistan as an object of enquiry and to start questioning some of the strategies that are most commonly used to think about it.

Type
Chapter
Information
Imagining Afghanistan
The History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge
, pp. 23 - 65
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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