I Thank Therefore I Am: Postcolonial Affective Governmentality of Higher Education in Pakistan

The discursive and affective legacies of colonialism have continued to shape the postcolonial knowledge ecosystems in different ways. This study, by using the post-Foucauldian framework of postcolonial affective governmentality, analyses and theorises the colonial patterns of thinking and feeling that underlie the dynamics of postcolonial higher education in Pakistan. For this purpose, it first maps the colonial genealogy of the postcolonial higher education system in Pakistan and second, explores the mechanism of the reproduction of the colonial dynamics in the system. To study the mechanism of the reproduction of the colonial dynamics that are theorised as the colonial matrix of power, two strategies of postcolonial affective governmentality, problematisation and ritualisation, are proposed in this study. To study the strategy of problematisation, a critical policy analysis of the historical higher education policies in Pakistan is carried out in this thesis. This analysis highlights the discursive and affective construction of the problem of quality in the higher education policies. The analysis of the policy problematisation of quality explains how the discursive and affective habits embedded in the experience of British colonial rule of India reproduce coloniality of knowledge, power, and being in the postcolonial context of Pakistan. After analysing the production of coloniality in the macro-practice of policy making, this study traces the dynamics of coloniality in the micro-practice of acknowledgements writing by appraising the governmentality strategy of ritualisation. A critical ritual analysis of the dissertation acknowledgements explores the strategies of the construction of ritualised space and agent. The construction of the ritualised space in acknowledgements involves strategies of external and internal structuring that engage colonial binaries of self and other. This structured ritualised space then offers the opportunity for the affective socialisation of the scholar/writer to produce a grateful scholarly self that performs epistemic complicity and reproduces the colonial matrix of power in the postcolonial context of Pakistan. This study, through a situated analysis, offers a context-sensitive understanding of the contours of coloniality and the mechanisms of its reproduction, which is important for imagining decolonial futures for postcolonial knowledge cultures such as Pakistan.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education

Grantor dc:publisher

ResearchSpace@Auckland

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Ahmad, Maria

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Grant, Barbara
• Kelly, Frances

• Epistemic coloniality
• Decolonisation of Higher Education
• Postcolonial affective governmentality
• Epistemic complicity

Statement dc:rights

• Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2292/72867

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchspace.auckland.ac.nz:2292/72867