Sovereign Attachments

Sovereign Attachments rethinks sovereignty by moving it out of the exclusive domain of geopolitics and legality and into cultural, religious, and gender studies. Through a close reading of a stunning array of cultural texts produced by the Pakistani state and the Pakistan-based Taliban, Shenila Khoja-Moolji theorizes sovereignty as an ongoing attachment that is negotiated in public culture. Both the state and the Taliban recruit publics into relationships of trust, protection, and fraternity by summoning models of Islamic masculinity, mobilizing kinship metaphors, and marshalling affect. In particular, masculinity and Muslimness emerge as salient performances through which sovereign attachments are harnessed. The book shifts the discussion of sovereignty away from questions about absolute dominance to ones about shared repertoires, entanglements, and co-constitution.  

"Khoja-Moolji’s success lies in highlighting the imbrications of sovereignty with religion as well as gender. . . . Sovereign Attachments would be of interest to both undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of international relations, gender and sexuality studies, Islamic studies and Asian studies.", "Khoja-Moolji’s book, with its focused context and excellent feminist analysis, illuminates the complex dynamics of sovereignty, forcing the reader to move beyond visible sovereign contests of violence and to consider those contests that occur in the cultural sphere.", “Khoja-Moolji presents critical new material that contributes to debates regarding the role of emotion, kinship, and gender in political movements. . . . Sovereign Attachments is a fascinating read”, "The interdisciplinary depth and reach of the book make it an impressive contribution to the study of gender, religion, and politics. . . . Khoja-Moolji’s creative, vivid, and nuanced textual analysis provides a convincing bulwark for her central thesis.", "The book is a remarkable contribution on how sovereignty is maintained by the Pakistani state and challenged by the Taliban through the performativity of Islamo-masculinity, kinship metaphors and memory in the public culture of Pakistan."  

Shenila Khoja-Moolji is Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at Bowdoin College. She is the author of the award-winning book Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia.