Spatial Manipulation in Karachi: A Postmodern Marxist Study of Hamid’s The Prisoner

Abstract

Examining Omar Shahid Hamid’s The Prisoner through Postmodern Marxist lens, this research analyzes how Karachi’s city space is being victimized by globalization and capitalism and highlights different ways of Karachiites’ spatial manipulation. Karachi as a metropolitan city, went through fragmentation and discontinuity due to globalization and is being affected by polycentric and kaleidoscopic socio-spatial structure. Postmodernists raise questions upon the idea of utopian city space and about the role of architecture and geography in a person’s life. Based upon arguments by Henri Lefebvre and Edward William Soja, this research substantiates how in The Prisoner, characters are manipulated by their social space and also foregrounds their resistance against this spatial cleansing. The research establishes how the individuality of a person is being victimized by capitalism which ultimately leads to spatial manipulation. Hamid also features how social institutions are becoming major tool for spatial cleansing and causes spatial injustice in a person’s life which is totally a backwash of pre-existing human norms and values.