The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories and the Bangladesh War of 1971

<strong>School of Arts and Aesthetics Jawaharlal Nehru University</strong> And <strong>Zubaan</strong> the launch of the book <strong>The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories and the Bangladesh War of 1971</strong> By <strong>Nayanika Mookherjee</strong> Durham University Panel Discussion Pratiksha Baxi, (Associate Professor, Law and Governance, JNU), Shohini Ghosh, (Professor, Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Milia Islamia) Tanika Sarkar, (Historian and Former Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU) Tanweer Fazal, (Associate Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Systems) <strong>November 21, 2016</strong> About the Book : 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 flattens the diversity of their experiences through which birangonas have lived with the violence of wartime rape.