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The Spectral Wound
Sexual Violence, Public Memories, and the Bangladesh War of 1971
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Nayanika Mookherjee
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2015
About this book
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.
Author / Editor information
Nayanika Mookherjee is Reader in Socio-Cultural Anthropology at Durham University.
Veena Das is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University.
Veena Das is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University.
Reviews
"The Spectral Wound is an exceptional book. It has thoroughly explored its subject from every conceivable angle in such a way as to give it a real intellectual richness."
-- Nardina Kaur Economic and Political Weekly
"It is a pleasure to review books that offer an innovative reading of important areas of recent scholarship. Nayanika Mookherjee’s book throws an epistemic challenge to previous authors and interpretations on the subject."
-- Rachana Chakraborty Social History
"Mookerjee's exemplary and closely argued The Spectral Wound highlights the central conundrum of making wartime rapes public: heroism, implied and acknowledged by the designation birangona, can only be acquired by making your shame public....[An] uncommonly complex and delicately observed study..."
-- Ritu Menon Women's Review of Books
"[Mookherjee] asks, ‘What would it mean for the politics of identifying wartime rape if we were to highlight how the raped woman folds the experience of sexual violence into her daily socialities, rather than identifying her as a horrific wound?’ That is the central question of this powerful and perceptive book."
-- Michael Lambek Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
"Critical, reflective, and transformative to our understanding of gender violence, memory, and recuperation, Mookherjee’s extraordinary ethnography is undoubtedly essential reading for scholars and students of feminist theory, anthropology, Bangladesh, and South Asia studies."
-- Elora Halim Chowdhury Journal of Asian Studies
"Engaging and lucidly written, The Spectral Wound raises a host of theoretical and ethical considerations. How might we re-conceptualize the experience of wartime rape without reducing survivor subjectivities to their “wounds?” To whom is the feminist activist accountable? . . . This thoughtful and provocative text calls on the reader to revisit such dilemmas instead of taking the answers for granted."
-- Dina M. Siddiqi International Feminist Journal of Politics
"Nayanika Mookherjee’s research is important as a testimonial, a guide, and as a recovery of the individual experiences of those raped in 1971."
-- Maitreyi Dhaka Tribune
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Foreword . Veena Das
ix -
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Preface. “A Lot of History, a Severe History”
xv -
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Acknowledgments
xxi -
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Introduction. “The Looking-Glass Border”
1 - One
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ONE.“THE MONTH OF MOURNING AND THE LANGUID FLOODWATERS”
31 -
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TWO. “WE WOULD RATHER HAVE SHAAK (GREENS) THAN MURGI (CHICKEN) POLAO”
47 -
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THREE. “BRINGING OUT THE SNAKE”
67 -
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FOUR. “A MINE OF THIEVES”
91 -
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FIVE. “MY OWN IMAGINATION IN MY OWN BODY”
107 - Two
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SIX. “MINGLING IN SOCIETY”
129 -
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SEVEN. THE ABSENT PIECE OF SKIN
159 -
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EIGHT. IMAGING THE WAR HEROINE
177 -
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NINE. SUBJECTIVITIES OF WAR HEROINES
228 - Three
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CONCLUSION. “THE TRUTH IS TOUGH”
251 -
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POSTSCRIPT. FROM 2001 UNTIL 2013
264 -
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Notes
277 -
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Glossary
291 -
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References
293 -
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Index
309
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
October 23, 2015
eBook ISBN:
9780822375227
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
352
Other:
42 illustrations
eBook ISBN:
9780822375227
Audience(s) for this book
Professional and scholarly;
