Salaman Taseer, Governor of Punjab, the Machivalliean Prince of Punjab’s politics and the Prince of media, accountancy and other industries – by yordinary understanding of Prince as related to wealth – was killed yesterday by his own guard. The official narrative of the incident by the Federal Government of Pakistan talks of a murder inspired by religious conviction. According to this narrative the guard’s motive for murder emerges from the remarks by the Governor against the Muslim blasphemy laws (Section 195 – C of Pakistan Penal Code).
The media has become a battleground of discourses, dominated by the liberal voice of ‘civil society,’ in which the media tries to locate itself. The secular, liberal and tolerant voice of civil society is pitted against the irrational, operating-beyond-the-structure-of-law voice of religious fundamentalism. This debate merges into the global confrontation between the “War of Terror” and the “War on Terror”.
However, how accurate is the popular narrative trumpeted by the media and what limits of accuracy can it hope to reach and touch? Pakistan presents to us the post-modern condition of knowledge. Knowledge in Pakistan is what Lacan refers to as the slipping signifier. There is no center or absolute understanding of knowledge. Knowledge is understood within a specific code and the realm of the symbolic, with socially constituted rules of understanding and grammar. To give such knowledge the status of absolute shall construct a reality of “sand castle’’ in full reach of the tides of counter-discourses.
The murder of Salman Taseer exposes this state of knowledge to us (like other recent incidents, i.e. the responsibility for bombings in Pakistan, the sudden appearance, disappearance and survival of the Taliban, etc). The political analysts and media anchors are searching for a meta-narrative to explain the death and make it palpable to the ordinary subscribers of media. All in all it is viewed as two alternate voices of ethics (legally construed) battling each other over the body of the Governor of Punjab.
But if we wait and scan the socio-political horizon and change the code, then the meaning of the death changes significantly. The death in the symbolic realm of the political, will change significance from one ”language game” to another. Conspiracy theories abound the popular construction of the death due to the uncertainty in the language of knowledge. The conspiracy theories blame the residents of Raiwind Palace to the ever so present role of agencies. America and the Presidential figure also emerge as suspects to gain from the death, in the popular cultural.
However, this popular cultural construction of the death resonate away from the code of civil society and media politics. The grammar of media only speaks upon the presentation of facts as constructed and understood by the language of state-legality (state-legality here represents the code of legality, of which the examples can be the defamation ordinance, PEMRA Ordinance, etc). However, the presence of one discourse by no means excludes the possibility of another discourse or being placed on a higher pedestal in relation to other popular discourses.
To sum up, the act of murder of th Governor of Punjab reveals to us again that knowledge in Pakistan keeps shifting meaning from one language game to another. The politics of Pakistan has no center and hence no meaning. Knowledge differs in different social contexts and social sites. The political anchorage given to knowledge shall be be spatially constructing knowledge in the form of a Commission Report. This represents to us a politics and a political culture working upon limited knowledge and working with a reality constructed and viewed by such limited knowledge.
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