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Atmospheric Violence grapples with the afterlife of environmental disasters and armed conflict and examines how people attempt to flourish despite and alongside continuing violence. Departing from conventional approaches to the study of disaster and conflict that have dominated academic studies of Kashmir, Omer Aijazi’s ethnography of life in the borderlands instead explores possibilities for imagining life otherwise, in an environment where violence is everywhere, or atmospheric.
Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the portion of Kashmir under Pakistan’s control and its surrounding mountainscapes, the book takes us to two remote mountainous valleys that have been shaped by recurring environmental disasters, as well as by the landscape of no-go zones, army barracks, and security checkpoints of the contested India/Pakistan border. Through a series of interconnected scenes from the lives of five protagonists, all of whom are precariously situated within their families or societies and rarely enjoy the expected protections of state or community, Aijazi reveals the movements, flows, and intimacies sustained by a landscape that enables alternative modes of life. Blurring the distinctions between story, theory, and activism, he explores what emerges when theory becomes a project of seeing and feeling from the non-normative standpoint of those who, like the book’s protagonists, do not subscribe to the rules by which most others have come to know the world.
Bringing the critical study of disaster into conversation with a radical humanist anthropology and the capaciousness of affect theory, held accountable to Black studies and Indigenous studies, Aijazi offers a decolonial approach to disaster studies centering not on trauma and rupture but rather on repair—the social labor through which communities living with disaster refuse the conditions of death imposed upon them and create viable lives for themselves, even amidst constant diminishment and world-annihilation.
"Omer Ajazi’s writing is poetic, radical and uncannily perceptive. His work will deeply resonate with scholars interested in knowing life in its entirety, life amidst chaos and ruins. A political necessity, Aijazi’s book holds valuable insights for anyone who breathes. It’s a rarity and a pleasure to encounter this kind of scholarship that oscillates between heartbeats and heartaches. This is the kind of scholarship that continually simplifies the self and amplifies the other, healing our souls, shaking our mind-hearts."
"Atmospheric Violence is a groundbreaking and visually stunning book that delivers a sophisticated read with a distinctive voice and nuanced narratives. Combining seemingly disparate areas of research and theories from the so-called margins that desperately need to be in conversation, Omer Aijazi deftly breaks out of silos to show us the potential of creative ethnography for the twenty-first century!"
"Atmospheric Violence [is an] epistemological invitation to move beyond academic silos, disciplinary norms and publishing standards. Yes, the book belongs to disaster studies and anthropology, but it features few of the conventional standards of these fields. It is different in its presentation and contents; a sort of epistemological alien that encourages the reader to open new doors, to explore new paths in their own research."
— J. C. Gaillard
"The poetic writing, the systematic rejection of frames of knowledge production that we internalise uncritically and the integrity with which Aijazi embraces the Pahars (mountains) and its people with heart and feeling produces an ethnography that is both creative and emancipatory. The form of the book is unique where the ethnography is divided into ‘scenes’ which are rich and textured and each scene warrants an independent reading for what it does to critical disaster studies but also the idea of repair and flourishing. This idea takes many forms and is riddled with contradictions which are breathtakingly real and foregrounded in atmospheric moorings and the struggles of everyday life."
— Rubina Jasani
"Atmospheric Violence proposes a novel understanding of repair. As opposed to reading repair as the work of attending to damage or disrepair, it bids an enabling, yet refreshing conception of layered, and even conflicting modes of acting and existing, which open up to new moral possibilities that do not simply replace the old one, but transcend them altogether, paving the way to a new, other way of being in the world in the face of adversity, death, and the chronic threat of atmospheric violence."
— Pacific Affairs
"Atmospheric Violence is not only a beautiful book that touches the reader and sometimes breaks their heart, but also an important contribution to the decolonization of anthropology and Kashmir studies, experimenting with the possibilities to tell Kashmir’s stories beyond the normative truths of the nation-state as the only valid complement to life and politics."
— Conflict and Society
Author’s Note
Introduction
Life Finds a Way
The Mountains Echo
Scenes
Scene One. Betrayal ۹
Scene Two. Kindness ۲۲
Scene Three. Friendship ۸
Scene Four. Ugly Feelings ۱
Scene Five. Opacity ۳
Epilogue
Heartwork
Have You Eaten?
Dissident Knowledge(s)
Who Can Stand with Kashmir?
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments