The spectral wound : sexual violence, public memories and the Bangladesh war of 1971 / Nayanika Mookherjee ; foreword by Veena Das.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mookherjee, Nayanika, 1972- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rape as a weapon of war--Bangladesh.

Rape as a weapon of war.

Women--Crimes against--Bangladesh.

Women.

Women--Crimes against.

Bangladesh.

Bangladesh--History--Revolution, 1971.

History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 325 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2015.

Summary:

Following the 1971 Bangladesh War, the Bangladesh government publicly designated the thousands of women raped by the Pakistani military and their local collaborators as birangonas ("brave women"). Nayanika Mookherjee demonstrates that while this celebration of birangonas as heroes keeps them in the public memory, they exist in the public consciousness as what Mookherjee calls a spectral wound. Dominant representations of birangonas as dehumanized victims with disheveled hair, a vacant look, and rejected by their communities create this wound, the effects of which flatten the diversity of their experiences through which birangonas have lived with the violence of wartime rape. In critically examining the pervasiveness of the birangona construction, Mookherjee opens the possibility for a more politico-economic, ethical, and nuanced inquiry into the sexuality of war. Book jacket.

Contents:

"The month of mourning and the languid flood waters" : the weave of national history

"We would rather have shaak (greens) than murgi (chicken) polao" : the archiving of the Birangona

"Bringing out the snake" : khota (scorn) and the public secrecy of sexual violence

"A mine of thieves" : interrogating local politics

"My own imagination in my own body" : embodied transgressions in the everyday

"Mingling in society" : rehabilitation program and re-membering the raped woman

The absent piece of skin : gendered, racialized, and territorial inscriptions of sexual violence during the Bangladesh war

"Imaging the war heroine" : examination of state, press, literary, visual, and human rights accounts, 1971-2001

Subjectivities of war heroines : victim, agent, traitor?

"The truth is tough" : human rights and the politics of transforming experiences of wartime rape "trauma" into public memories.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 293-308) and index.

ISBN:

9780822359494

0822359499

9780822359685

0822359685

OCLC:

900242699