Ayyaz Mallick

I am an urban geographer and engaged in the interdisciplinary study of class, state, and urban space (with a particular focus on Pakistan). My research interests include Marxist and postcolonial theory, with a focus on labour and urban politics in Pakistan. I have recently completed my PhD from the Faculty of Environmental Studies (York), where my doctoral dissertation traced the evolution of working class politics in Karachi over the last four decades. I have published popular and academic articles in English and Urdu exploring issues of postcolonial state theory, urban development and restructuring, and the relationship between “particular” and “universal” in social theory and political practice. My academic articles have appeared in Studies in Political Economy, Urban Geography, Antipode and Tarikh [History].

I have recently co-authored a book chapter (with Stefan Kipfer) on postcolonial mobilisations of Antonio Gramsci and the promise of a Gramsci-Fanon convergence for a critically historicist social theory. Currently, I am co-writing an essay (with Hadia Akhtar Khan) on the Pakistani sociologist Hamza Alavi, for a special issue of Political Power and Social Theory bringing neglected global South thinkers to bear on contemporary debates in social theory. I am also writing a chapter for a volume commemorating 60 years of Frantz Fanon’s anti-colonial classic The Wretched of the Earth.

For my postdoctoral work, I am developing a new project which builds upon my dissertation research by focusing on a popular social movement that developed a cross-ethnic, working class model of organizing in the 1980s, the very same moment when Karachi was being engulfed in exclusivist and violent politics. I am also in the process of preparing a book manuscript and at least two articles from my dissertation. The book-in-progress will advance a critical Marxist account of the evolution of class, ethnicity and urban politics in Karachi while intervening in key debates in social and geographical theory. The first academic article engages the work of Michael Burawoy and feminist political economists to advance an innovative conception of “labour regimes” for understanding varied forms of labour control and consciousness in the “informal” sector. The second article develops an understanding of space as constitutive—not simply contextual—to literary texts through an engagement with Raymond Williams, Henri Lefebvre and Fredric Jameson.

Publications

Refereed Journal Articles
2020 Ayyaz Mallick. “From Partisan Universal to Concrete Universal? The Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement in Pakistan,” Antipode 52(6): 1774-1793.

2018 Ayyaz Mallick. “Urban Space and (the Limits of) Middle Class Hegemony in Pakistan,” Urban Geography 39(7): 1113-1120.

2017 Ayyaz Mallick. “Beyond ‘Domination Without Hegemony’: Passive Revolution(s) in Pakistan,” Studies in Political Economy 98(3): 239-262.

Book Chapters
2020 Stefan Kipfer and Ayyaz Mallick. “Which Gramsci for (post)colonial times? For a Fanon-Gramsci lineage,” invited chapter in Gramsci Nel Mondo Nord-Americano [Gramsci in the North American World], edited by Renate Holub, Francesco Giasi, and Giuseppe Vacca. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino. [Forthcoming in Italian & English]

Academic Publications in Urdu
2019 Ayyaz Mallick. “Amli Jidliyat Aur Marx Ka Tajreedi Tareeqa-e-Kar” [Marx’s Method and the Dialectics of Practice], Tarikh [History] 61:100-125.

2017 Ayyaz Mallick. “Gramsci aur Inqilab-e-Roos: Marxi Fikr Mein Tosee aur Takhleeq-Kaari Ki Roodad” [Gramsci and the Russian Revolution: Extension and Innovation in Marxist Theory], Book Chapter in Bolshevik Inqilab Ke Sau Saal [100 Years of the Bolshevik Revolution], edited by Mushtaq Ali Shan, pp. 207 223. Fiction House: Karachi.

Publications in Preparation
2021 Ayyaz Mallick and Hadia Akhtar Khan. “Alavi Contra Alavi: Towards a Conjunctural Awareness,” Special Issue of Political Power & Social Theory on neglected Left thinkers from South Asia.

2021 Ayyaz Mallick. “The Immediacy of Fanon in Pakistan,” Invited chapter in volume commemorating 60 years of Frantz Fanon’s classic The Wretched of the Earth, edited by Nigel Gibson. Ottawa: Daraja Press.