The Spectral Wound

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 ...

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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.

Foreword ix
Preface: A Lot of History, a Severe History xv
Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction: The "Looking-Glass Border" 1
Part I
1. The Month of Mourning and the Languid Floodwaters: The Weave of National History 31
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Foreword ix
Preface: A Lot of History, a Severe History xv
Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction: The "Looking-Glass Border" 1
Part I
1. The Month of Mourning and the Languid Floodwaters: The Weave of National History 31
2. We Would Rather Have Shaak (Greens) Than Murgi (Chicken) Polao: The Archiving of the Birangona 47
3. Bringing Out the Snake: Khota (Scorn) and the Public Secrecy of Sexual Violence 67
4. A Mine of Thieves: Interrogting Local Politics 91
5. My Own Imagination in My Own Body: Embodied Transgressions in the Everyday 107
Part II
6. Mingling in Society: Rehabilitation Program and Re-membering the Raped Woman 129
7. The Absent Piece of Skin: Gendered, Racialized, and Territorial Inscriptions of Sexual Violence during the Bangladesh War 159
8. Imagining the War Heroine: Examination of State, Press, Literary, Visual, and Human Rights Accounts, 1971–2001 177
9. Subjectivities of War Heroines: Victim, Agent, Traitor? 228
Part III
Conclusion. The Truth is Tough: Human Rights and the Politics of Transforming Experiences of Wartime Rape "Trauma" into Public Memories 251
Postscript: From 2001 until 2013 264
Notes 277
Glossary 291
References 293
Index 309
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