Converting Dissent: Resistance Art, Paratexts and the Normalisation of Rule in Kashmir

This paper examines how resistance art from Kashmir becomes absorbed into the global circuits of representation that sustain contemporary hyper-imperialism. It theorises the process through which visual dissent is converted into cultural legitimacy for dominant institutions by tracing how artistic works are selected, reframed, and circulated within the paratextual infrastructures of exhibitions, grants, and curatorial discourse. Working entirely with secondary sources such as exhibition catalogues, funding calls, curatorial essays, and press features, the paper constructs a three-pillar framework drawing on Bourdieu, Said and Spivak. Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic capital explains how dissenting aesthetics accumulate legitimacy once translated into institutional grammar. Said and Spivak reveal how orientalist logics and epistemic violence make dissent legible only as heritage, identity, or therapy. This paper demonstrates how indices of structural domination—such as occupation, militarisation, and disappearance—are paratextually transformed into symbols of pluralism and resilience. Using publicly available materials about artists like Faheem Abdullah and Farhana Bhat, it demonstrates how works referencing occupation, militarization, and disappearance are subtly reinterpreted as gestures of pluralism. This pattern reflects broader trends of hyper-imperial governance, where cultural and algorithmic infrastructures make resistance recognizable primarily when it supports the liberal order. The analysis highlights how symbolic capital is transferred from marginalized voices to global institutions through paratextual mediation, contributing to the soft power of states and corporations involved in post-colonial domination. The paper contributes two innovations: a compact theoretical mechanism for tracking the normalisation of power through art without new data collection, and a methodological note on reading paratexts as instruments of hyper-imperial control. It concludes by recognising the limits of this conversion in independent venues that resist institutional framing and by asking what forms of aesthetic and epistemic resistance remain possible under occupation and digital surveillance.