City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

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

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Includes bibliographical references and index

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non fiction

The spectral wound

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Nayanika Mookherjee ; foreword by Veena Das

sexual violence, public memories and the Bangladesh war of 1971

In this ethnography of sexual violence during the 1971 Bangladesh War for Independence, Nayanika Mookherjee shows how the public celebration of the hundreds of thousands of rape victims-called 'birangonas' by the state-works to homogenize and silence the experiences of these women., 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

specialized