Individuating the Classified Self

• In Event: Naming Stakes: Critical Histories of Classification and Categorization

English Abstract

This paper will explore two distinct technologies of bureaucratic identification: the British colonial state’s Punjab Registration Manual and the postcolonial Pakistani state’s paper-based national identity registry. Through the Punjab Registration Manual, the colonial state redeployed classificatory categories (such as caste and tribe) in order to identify individuals. However, it struggled to individuate in the face of categorical sameness. In contrast, Pakistan’s national identity registration system sought to record, track and reproduce individuals as unique entities but, perhaps inadvertently, smuggled in classificatory group identity categories (such as ethnicity and religion). By bridging the colonial-postcolonial divide, this paper asks how the figure of the classified individual was transformed by technologies of identification in South Asia—attending to the impurity of those technologies and the impossibly permeable boundaries of the individual.

Author

• Zehra Hashmi, Brown University