Patriarchy as an Assemblage: Qandeel Baloch, Male Domination and Feminist Publics in Pakistan

Abstract

This article contributes to recent debates about nuancing the idea of ‘patriarchy’ by drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of assemblage. It provides an account of patriarchy as a contingent yet persistent effect of human and material interactions wherein some molar forces aggregate and territorialise social relations around specific notions of womanhood, while molecular flows evade them. The particular set of interactions that this paper considers are configured through and around Qandeel Baloch, a social media celebrity from Pakistan, who was asphyxiated by her brother in 2016. In life, Baloch evaded several normative boundaries prescribed for middle-class Pakistani women. Riding the wave of social media expansion and an attentive youthful audience, she monetised male lust by transforming her body into a commodity, challenged self-appointed arbiters of religion, and mocked politicians. In death, she has been re-territorialised by mainstream media to conform to the social codes that bolster male domination. At the same time, she has been de-territorialised by feminist collectives that have produced their own normativity (or molarity) by erasing Baloch’s ambiguities and pronouncing her a feminist icon. Examining patriarchy as an assemblage of forces directs our attention to such heterogenous, even contradictory, movements wherein some pathways—male domination—are more heavily trafficked than others.