The Metacolonial State: Pakistan, Critical Ontology, and the Biopolitical Horizons of Political Islam

The Metacolonial State offers a novel rethinking of the relationship between Islam and the Political. It is the first major study that seeks to develop a critical ontology of political violence and the state of exception in Pakistan. Key to the text is an original argument regarding the “biopoliticization of Islam” and the imperative need for understanding sovereign violence and the state of exception in resolutely ontological terms. The Metacolonial State endeavors to shed new light on the signatures of power undergirding postcolonial life, while situating Pakistan as an indispensable site for reflection on the nature of modernity’s precarious present.

The cross-disciplinary approach of Dr. Jan’s work is certain to have broad appeal among geographers, historians, anthropologists, postcolonial theorists, and political scientists, among others. At the same time his innovative explication of critical ontology and its application to a radical reading of the intersection of history and the event will add a bold new dimension to social science research on Islamism and biopolitics.