Love in the time of occupation

Reveries, longing, and intoxication in Kashmir

Bibliographic Data

ID2260729
AuthorsVarma (0000-0002-5954-7401, University of California San Diego, corresponding author), Saiba Varma (Department of Anthropology University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla CA 92023)
Year2016
Volume43
Issue1
Pages50-62
Publication date2016-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/amet.12262
OpenAlexW2340130017
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited37

At a drug rehabilitation clinic in Indian-occupied Kashmir, patients were subjected to a range of biomedical and penitentiary techniques. These techniques included group therapy sessions in which substance users performed narratives of their recovery-a practice that made visible their gratitude to the police, which oversaw the clinic and which, as an arm of the Indian military, many view as an illegal occupying force. While patients publicly pledged to remain sober and technically complied with the clinic's demands, they privately demonstrated ongoing commitments to nasha (intoxication), which places substance use, romantic love, and the search for divine unity in Sufism on the same phenomenological register. Through nasha, patients defied biomedical injunctions to forget their pasts and recuperated intoxication as a worthwhile experience. [addiction, substance abuse treatment, military humanitarianism, recovery, reverie, Kashmir

Addiction · Alcoholics Anonymous · Art · Gratitude · Islam · Literature · Narrative · Physical therapy · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Romance · Sociology · Sufism · History · Indian History and Philosophy · Medicine · Philosophy · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · Psychology · Rehabilitation · Religious studies · South Asian Studies and Conflicts

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub