Voices of Anger and Despair: Disrupting Memories of War and Conflict in Contemporary Pashto Poetry on Social Media

Abstract

There has been a notable shift in the subject matter of Pakistani Literary Writers after the 9/11 attacks and subsequent War-on-Terror in many areas of Pakistan. In the aftermath of these incidents, majority areas of the country were severely affected. Like some other parts of the country, many regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA turned into active battlegrounds where many people lost their properties and livelihood while compelled others on migration to alien regions. It also cost them great physical, economic, and mental losses. During this era of absurdity, mental depression, and chaos writers felt the urge to express the new experiences and realities in new ways and thus war became a dominant theme in the writings of many writers. The war driven landscape was reflected in a grim, nostalgic, and fragmented language. Although, these themes and approaches were adopted by a variety of writers in different genres of literature, the current study investigates the reflection of these traumatic and chaotic events in Pashto poetry popular on social media. The sample of this study consists of various poems and stanzas from poets such as Israr Atal, Rahmat Shah Sayel, and some young poets who are known as social media poets. The current study is conducted through the theoretical perspective adopted from multiple theorists such as Cathy Caruth, Melvin Seeman, Fritz Pappenheim, Jean Paul Sarte and Albert Camus by mainly focusing on different aspects of disrupting memories of war, alienation, and absurdity. The main objective of this study is to highlight that how war and conflict affected people mentally and is still remembered in unpleasant memories.