Abstract
Following the 1971 Bangladesh War, the Bangladesh government publicly designated the thousands of women raped by the then West Pakistani (later Pakistani) military and their local East Pakistani (later Bangladeshi) collaborators as birangonas, ("brave women”). Drawing Spectral Wound aims to counter the assumption of silence relating to wartime rape and ethnographically map out the circulation of public memories related to the sexual violence of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 (Muktijuddho). This public memory manifests in the internationally unprecedented state designation of the raped women as birangonas (war heroines) in 1971; an extensive 45 year old archive of visual and literary representations of the raped woman dating back to 1971; and human rights testimonies of poor and middle class birangonas since the 1990s. The book demonstrates that while this celebration of birangonas as heroes keeps them in the public memories, they exist in the public consciousness as what I call a spectral wound. Dominant representations of birangonas as dehumanized victims with disheveled hair, and rejected by their communities create this wound, the effects of which flatten the diversity of their experiences through which birangonas have lived with this violence of wartime rape. Through a year-long fieldwork conducted in 1997-1998 and later in 2011-2013, the book ethnographically examines the circulation of images, press and literary representations, testimonies of rape among survivors of sexual violence and their families, the left-liberal civil society and state actors. It focuses not only on the experiences of women but also of that of men; examines public memory and public secrecy of wartime rape in a post-conflict context rather than seeking to highlight silent narratives; and finally locates the narratives within wider political, literary and visual contexts. In critically examining the pervasiveness of the birangona construction, the book decentres the prevalent understandings of stigma, silence, honour, shame and reparations relating to wartime rape and opens the possibility for a more politico-economic and ethical inquiry into the sexuality of war.