Postcolonial and Posthuman Trajectories of the Necropolitical Agency of Drone Warfare in Contemporary Pakistani Anglophone Fiction

The depiction of the materiality of drone warfaredrone warfare in contemporary Pakistani Anglophone fiction is one of the many potential sites where the intersections between posthuman and postcolonial studies can be witnessed and theorized. Drone technology is used for both civilian and military purposes; however, in the Pakistani context, military drone technology looms larger because of the long drone attack history in Pakistani territory. Therefore, the posthumanposthuman/nonhuman entity of drone technology emerges as a tool which brings destruction to human ecology and their habitats and changes the overall quality of living. By applying the diffractive methodology and analysing the drone subjectivities through the lens of agential realismagential realism (BaradBarad 2007), this chapter argues that posthuman bodiesbodies of drones have “necropolitical” (MbembeMbembe, Public Culture 15 (1): 11–40, 2003) agency, which renders human life as Homo Sacer (Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press, 1998) and creates “thanatoscapes” (Baraybar and Azevedo, Death Studies 47 (6): 714–726, 2022) by carrying out target strikes. I will analyse the material-discursive agency of drones as portrayed in Mohsin HamidHamid’s novels Exit WestHamidExit West (2017) and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising AsiaHamidHow to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013) and his short story “Terminator: Attack of the Drone”, Uzma Aslam KhanUzma Aslam Khan’s novel Thinner Than SkinKhanThinner Than Skin (2013), and Nadeem AslamNadeem Aslam’s The Golden LegendAslamThe Golden Legend (2017). By combining the precepts of the posthuman and postcolonialpostcolonial theories, this section demonstrates that the literary techniques of diction, narrative strategies, imagery, motifs, and symbols have been used to portray posthuman inhuman agency drones in Pakistani fiction. The diffractive analysis of drone warfare not only gives insight into the emerging posthuman types of colonizations but also provides critical tools to expand the trajectory of joint literary critiques in ‘posthumanism’ and ‘postcolonialism’. By applying these homogenous theoretical frameworks, this section of the book contends that drone surveillance and target strikes perpetuate posthuman forms of colonization. I illustrate how the intra-actionintra-action between imperialimperial power and nonhuman alterities of drones perpetuates multiple forms of colonizations and dehumanizations in the Global South.