Fear, Desire, and the Classless Subject | Aasim Sajjad Akhtar on Hegemony in Pakistan

In this episode of the Organic Filaments Network, Sher Ali Khan speaks with Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, author of The Struggle for Hegemony in Pakistan: Fear, Desire and Revolutionary Horizons, about katchi abadis, actually existing capitalism, middle-class aspiration, digital life, and the problem of building a collective political horizon. Beginning with the ongoing eviction of Islamabad’s katchi abadis, the conversation examines the political economy through which working people are made expendable to roads, speculative real estate, beautification, legality, and security. Akhtar discusses a form of capitalism that no longer promises incorporation through stable industrial work, housing, or welfare, while land, debt, informality, patronage, and precarious survival shape everyday life. The discussion moves through neoliberalism and the predatory state, the state bourgeoisie, the ideological work of middle-class aspiration, and the historical production of intermediate classes. Akhtar also revisits Partha Chatterjee’s politics of the governed, questioning whether accommodation, negotiation, and transactional political agency can generate an emancipatory horizon. Against the pull of aspiration and the manufacture of internal enemies, Akhtar considers the dialectic of fear and desire, the digitalized life-world, online political performance, and the organizational problem posed by algorithmic life. The conversation closes with the classless subject, a political horizon that brings struggles around class, race, gender, ecology, nation, and dispossession into relation without flattening their differences. Like, share, and subscribe. Support the work: BuyMeACoffee.com/OrganicFilamentsNetwork Follow Organic Filaments Network: Instagram: @organicfilamentsnetwork Substack: organicfilamentsnetwork.substack.com Timestamps 00:00 Introduction 01:06 Islamabad’s katchi abadis and the war on the poor 03:52 Eviction, resistance, and the limits of legal protection 05:50 Security, legality, development, and the demolition regime 07:33 Roads, planning, and the expendability of the urban poor 10:31 Actually existing capitalism in Pakistan 14:10 Neoliberalism, the predatory state, and the state bourgeoisie 19:00 Middle-class aspiration as ideology 23:28 Fanon, the national bourgeoisie, and the middle-class myth 26:59 Intermediate classes, traders, brokers, and class formation 29:42 Partha Chatterjee, Kalyan Sanyal, and the politics of the governed 33:23 Fear, desire, and hegemonic order 35:43 Digital life, self-discipline, and political demobilization 38:09 The digitally crafted self and online political performance 42:19 The digitalized life-world, AI, and taking politics offline 48:58 The classless subject and an emancipatory horizon 50:41 Difference, fragmentation, and political unity 51:34 National-popular collective will and the war of position 52:30 Closing reflections Further Reading Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, The Struggle for Hegemony in Pakistan: Fear, Desire and Revolutionary Horizons Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, The Politics of Common Sense Aasim Sajjad Akhtar and Ammar Rashid, “Dispossession and the Militarised Developer State” Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed Kalyan Sanyal, Rethinking Capitalist Development Iqbal Ahmad, selected writings on Pakistan, the state, and political power #OrganicFilamentsNetwork #AasimSajjadAkhtar #Pakistan #Hegemony #PoliticalEconomy #KatchiAbadis #Neoliberalism #DigitalLife #Gramsci #Fanon #ClassPolitics #CriticalTheory #RevolutionaryPolitics #MiddleClass #ClasslessSubject