The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories, and the Bangladesh War of 1971

Description

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. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Foreword......Page 10 Preface: “A Lot of History, a Severe History”......Page 16 Acknowledgments......Page 22 Introduction: The “Looking-Glass Border”......Page 26 Part I......Page 54 One. “The Month of Mourning and the Languid Floodwaters”: The Weave of National History......Page 56 Two. “We Would Rather Have Shaak (Greens) Than Murgi (Chicken) Polao”: The Archiving of the Birangona......Page 72 Three. “Bringing Out the Snake”: Khota (Scorn) and the Public Secrecy of Sexual Violence......Page 92 Four . “A Mine of Thieves”: Interrogating Local Politics......Page 116 Five . “My Own Imagination in My Own Body”: Embodied Transgressions in the Everyday......Page 132 Part II......Page 152 Six. “Mingling in Society”: Rehabilitation Program and Re-membering the Raped Woman......Page 154 Seven. The Absent Piece of Skin: Gendered, Racialized, and Territorial Inscriptions of Sexual Violence during the Bangladesh War......Page 184 Eight. “Imaging the War Heroine”: Examination of State, Press, Literary, Visual, and Human Rights Accounts, 1971–2001......Page 202 Nine. Subjectivities of War Heroines: Victim, Agent, Traitor?......Page 253 Part III......Page 274 Conclusion. “The Truth Is Tough”: Human Rights and the Politics of Transforming Experiences of Wartime Rape “Trauma” into Public Memories......Page 276 Postscript: From 2001 until 2013......Page 289 Notes......Page 302 Glossary......Page 316 References......Page 318 A......Page 334 B......Page 335 E......Page 337 F......Page 338 I......Page 339 K......Page 340 L......Page 341 M......Page 342 N......Page 343 P......Page 344 R ......Page 345 S......Page 347 W......Page 349 Z......Page 350