Abstract:
The events of 9/11 brought Pakistan under glaring Western scrutiny. The Western
academic literature even before 9/11 had been active in constructing Pakistan’s
representational identity, but in the aftermath of 9/11 new identities such as failed
state, security state etc. continued to proliferate academic literature. Despite the
academic turn towards understanding how representational identities are constructed
through dominant knowledge structures and academic texts originating in the West,
there has been scant research on how non-Western knowledge centres
unscrupulously accept Western representational identities as their own. This
research will argue that this constructed representation has been reproduced in the
non-West by the non-Western intellectuals themselves through their pedagogical
practices. The research further argues that the non-West’s dependence on Western
intellectual imports are recirculated through pedagogical practices gives rise to
epistemic violence. In order to explore the intellectual imperialism of the West and
the circulation of its ideas in the non-West through pedagogical practices, this
research will examine how the War on Terror, both in concept and practice was
circulated by local intellectuals in Pakistani universities. The research will
demonstrate how the non-West’s dependency on the Western ideas shapes the
pedagogical practices. The research will do so through a critical discourse analysis
of the theses published on the War on Terror in the last five years in the top five
universities ranked by the Pakistani HEC.
