Divine deaths or terrorist slaughter? Contested memoryscapes in post-Army Public School, Pakistan

Following a 2014 terrorist attack in Pakistan that killed 132 schoolchildren, the state renamed 107 public schools to memorialize the victims. However, post-Army Public School memory politics has become deeply contested. Drawing on ethnographic research at a renamed school site and the first-anniversary commemoration, this article examines how the state mobilizes a sacrificial discourse of martyrdom that positions the slain children as soldier-citizens, thus glorifying and celebrating their deaths. The renamed schools, as pedagogical toponyms, function as sites of active and passive indoctrination that cultivate desire for martyrdom and desensitize youth to violence through a hidden curriculum of patriotic sacrifice. Yet, even as the militarist state operates as a hegemonic and repressive memory machine, some parents exploit the contradictions within the martyrdom discourse to create opportunities for counter-grieving and alternative remembrance. This article contributes to our understanding of how memory in a transitional justice context becomes a site of power and contestation.