Description:

Please join the International Relations Speaker Series as they host Shah Zeb Chaudhary, Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Northwestern University, for a presentation titled "Melodramatic Nations and Serious States: The Affective Economies of Sovereignty in Pakistan-U.S. Relations."

ABSTRACT: The desire for sovereignty, despite its constitutions by ideals of self-determination, autonomy, independence, and supreme authority, is a structure of deep dependency and exercises of sovereign power exceed state boundaries. This dissonance between the ideal of sovereignty and its practice creates fundamental political and affective problems that nation-states, such as Pakistan and the U.S., navigate in different ways. The talk explores melodrama and seriousness as affective genres of political discourse through which nation-states make sense of and do sovereign politics. Melodrama situates feelings of non-sovereignty and powerlessness in specific evil others and promises sovereign redemption for the virtuous nation through heroic and dramatic acts of violence. It is a story of a virtuous U.S. out to avenge itself and rid the world of evil post-9/11 and a Pakistan that developed nuclear weapons despite overwhelming forces working against it. Seriousness understands the problem by acknowledging the intractability of structure, simultaneously placing them in the actions of emotional others, and situating sovereign action as a consequence of hard realities and limited agency, of doing what must be done. This is President Musharraf’s ‘rational judgment’ that draws a line to the Prophet Muhammad himself and Obama’s ‘fundamental seriousness’, the right attitude to solving the problems of geopolitics. This is a world where the expansion of the drone program and collateral damage are tragic necessities, supporting the Taliban behind the scenes while also allying with the U.S. is strategic management, and the security of U.S. and Afghanistan are interwoven in the tribal regions of Pakistan. 

Shah Zeb Chaudhary is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Northwestern University, studying International Relations. Chaudhary was a Fulbright Scholar at Georgetown University. Chaudhary's research focuses on emotions, affect, international relations, morality, and sovereignty, and is broadly interested in how we can study political emotions in a global context, especially the affective dimensions of international relations.