Taliban performativity, contestation and representation 1994-2001

This thesis interrogates the impact and challenges of established systems of collective representation continuously utilised by Western-dominated epistemic communities, shaping understanding of Afghanistan's sociopolitical landscape, and the Taliban as actors within it. Using the framework of Jeffrey Alexander’s cultural pragmatics, the thesis undertakes a critical analysis of representations of the Taliban's performative violence and spatial repurposing as postcolonial contestation and the struggle for power to create meaning between 1994 and 2001. The research navigates Afghanistan as a complex landscape of identities, borne of constant negotiation to establish hegemonic positions and power to define and dismiss Others, camouflaging ontological ‘becomings’ and confining movements like the Taliban to static, predefined categories. To this end, the thesis examines epistemic approaches, specifically practices of representation and development of hegemonic narratives, around three pivotal events in the Taliban’s early history: the display of the Prophet's cloak by Mullah Omar in Kandahar (1996), the exhibition of Najibullah's mutilated corpse upon Taliban entry to Kabul (1996), and the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas (2001). These events are treated as case studies, allowing for a nuanced analysis of the (re)mobilisation of background symbols and foreground scripts of cultural pragmatics. The thesis charts the Taliban’s failure to challenge the hegemony of international epistemic communities, as they struggled for dominance in the construction of narratives and meaning in representations of Afghanistan as ‘violent geography’ and the Taliban as ‘fanatics’.