Safety Tools or Cruel Devices: Slow Violence of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) in Pakistani Anglophone Fiction

Pakistani Anglophone fiction is replete with references to arms and ammunition in both war and peace contexts. The depiction of small weapons in civilian contexts also lends to a posthumanposthuman performative literary critique, which unravels the material-discursive discourse in the plot of the texts as well as their agency in shaping the character disposition and life course of the people who get involved with the weapons. This chapter conducts a diffractive analysis of selected Pakistani texts to explore the agency of small weapons and their ensuing slow violenceviolence. I will again tap into the term ‘weaponscapes’ (my conflation of AppaduraiAppadurai’s theorization of the ‘technoscape’) here to signify the globalglobal flows of small arms and light weapons (SALW) orchestrated by imperialimperial powers. This chapter demonstrates that weapons reach the ‘postcolonypostcolony’ either as a tool of punishment and discipline or as an agent to further its imperial agendas, and once these agendas are fulfilled, the Empire leaves these weapons untended in the postcolonialpostcolonial geographies which have serious ramifications for their society, human security, and peace. By quoting from Uzma Aslam KhanUzma Aslam Khan’s TrespassingKhanTrespassing, Nadeem AslamNadeem Aslam’s The Wasted VigilAslamThe Wasted Vigil and The Blind Man’s Garden,AslamThe Blind Man’s Garden and Mohsin HamidHamid’s Moth SmokeHamidMoth Smoke and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising AsiaHamidHow to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, this chapter will highlight the impact of global conflicts on Pakistani locallocal weaponscapes, the co-constitution of human subjectivities in connection with SALW, the illegal use of weapons by regional warlords, and the ensuing rise in crime rate of the postcolonial communities due to the global flows of weapons.