Necro-politics: Representation of Socio-civil Death of Blind Zainab in A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Muhammad Hanif

Abstract

The paper examines the role of necro-politics in shaping the socio-civil death of Zainab, a blind character in Muhammad Hanif’s novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008). Drawing on Mbembe’s notion of necro-politics (2003&2019) the study investigates that how sovereign entities like judicial systems, law enforcement agencies, in dictatorial regime reinforce systematic socio-civil death wherein she is denied legal recognition and reduced to a disposable subject. Zainab’s blindness makes her vulnerable to both legal and social marginalization, ultimately leading to her socio-civil death, The study employs a Catherine Belsey’s textual analysis method (2014) to discover that how the select text depicts and criticizes the state mechanism in maintaining necro-power, by highlighting the intersection of law and disability and institutionalized violence. The study demonstrates that sovereign institutions function not merely as enforcers of law but as arbiters of life and death. In sum, the paper contributes to the broader critique on how necro-politics is operated in Pakistan revealing the systematic mechanism through which some disposable bodies are rendered invisible.