Shelter for the Night : On Afghanistan, Language, and Detours

Duke University Press

Shelter for the NightOn Afghanistan, Language, and Detours\nAuthor(s): Fatima Mojaddedi\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Duke University Press, United States\nImprint: Duke University Press\nISBN-13: 9781478038535, 978-1478038535\nSynopsis\nShelter for the Night is an ethnographic meditation on language and psychic life in 2010s Afghanistan, where militarized violence has collapsed social worlds. Across Kabul and the countryside, in poetic and probing style, the book unpacks the precarious relationship between language, violence, and the self. As social and political worlds fracture through militarized violence, economic speculation, interpersonal sabotage, and ruptures in shared understanding, people are set on unexpected detours to discontinuity. Encounters in political life, love, and translation become fragmented, difficult to parse, and entangled in symbolic violence. Yet amid the harsh realities of contemporary life in Kabul, Fatima Mojaddedi finds moments of wonder and rich inne.