Description
Book SynopsisIn 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 victimsâcalled birangonas by the stateâworks to homogenize and silence the experiences of these women.
Trade Review"
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 *
Table of ContentsForeword 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
