STICKY INFRASTRUCTURES AND ENVIRONMENTAL AFFECT: GLACIERS, TERRAINS, AND THE CO-PRODUCTION OF STIGMA IN UZMA ASLAM KHAN’S THINNER THAN SKIN

Abstract

This article develops a novel theoretical synthesis by combining Sara Ahmed’s concept of “sticky affects” which provides a lens to look at the ways in which emotions such as suspicion, fear, and outsiderness circulate and adhere to particular bodies through repetition and association, with Jane Bennett’s notion of “vibrant matter,” which attributes active agency and vitality to nonhuman entities and forces. Applied to Uzma Aslam Khan’s 2012 novel “Thinner Than Skin”, this framework reveals how the extreme weather, moving glaciers, and treacherous terrain of northern Pakistan function not as passive backdrops but as “affective accomplices” to state power. Existing scholarship has largely treated checkpoints and bordering practices as exclusively human-political mechanisms of postcolonial oppression. This study intervenes by demonstrating how the natural environment actively collaborates with these infrastructures to isolate nomadic Gujjar communities, intensify their vulnerability, and make the stigma of being perceived as outsiders “stick” more tenaciously to their bodies. The article argues that the landscape co-produces biopolitical control and marginalisation in the Global South through detailed close reading. This method will help with the new materialist, affect and postcolonial ecocritical research and provide novel perspectives on climate-sensitive areas that accentuate existing inequalities.