The politics and aesthetics of commemoration: national days in southern Africa

The contributions to the special section in this issue study recent independence celebrations and other national days in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They explore the role of national days in state-making and nation-building, and examine the performativity of nationalism and the role of performances in national festivities. Placing the case studies in a broader, comparative perspective, the introduction first discusses the role of the state in national celebrations, highlighting three themes: firstly, the political power-play and contested politics of memory involved in the creation of a country’s festive calendar; secondly, the relationship between state control of national days and civic or popular participation or contestation; and thirdly, the complex relationship between regional and ethnic loyalties and national identifications. It then turns to the role of performance and aesthetics in the making of nations in general, and in national celebrations in particular. Finally, we look at the different formats and meanings of national days in the region and address the question whether there is anything specific about national days in southern Africa as compared to other parts of the continent or national celebrations world-wide.Web of Scienc

Aurality of images in graphic ethnographies: Sexual violence during wars and memories of the feelings of fear

This article examines the role of graphic ethnography in mapping the objects and feelings of fear through the silence of images, through the aurality of this silence. By aurality, I refer to the sounds and feelings felt by the reader when seeing these images in their colours, visuality and contexts which are not brought out by words and texts alone. The article explores the new sociographies that emerge from this intercitationality of visceral fear, from the aurality of this dread, that survivors of sexual violence during the Bangladesh war of 1971 feel till today. It suggests that we need to go beyond the search for the ‘unsayable and unseeable’ to understand how survivors and their quotidian existence are intertwined with these objects of fear. Nothing is unseeable or unsayable for survivors here as they live through fear ‘as an environment’. The article explores the intertextual, intercitational registers between my book The Spectral Wound and my co-authored graphic novel, Birangona, in order to bring out the reparative aspects of graphic ethnography and the new forms of knowledge production

1971: Pakistan's Past and Knowing What Not to Narrate

The formation of Bangladesh in 1971 coincided with the death of three million people and rape of two hundred thousand women (according to official and contested figures) by the West Pakistani army and local East Pakistani collaborators. Yet 1971 rarely exists in any public form in Pakistan and there is no “will to architecture” in relation to it. This essay explores the phenomenon of “apparent amnesia” of the past that is 1971 in Pakistan. What implications does consigning 1971 to oblivion have for Pakistan's history? This essay seeks to examine the politics of knowing what not to narrate in relation to the disavowed pasts of 1971 in Pakistan. It draws on long-term ethnographic research on the public memories and nationalist narratives of sexual violence during the Bangladesh war of 1971, along with discussions with various Pakistani scholars and students and engagement with historical sources, government documents, textbooks, blog posts, press articles, and other secondary materials. This gives us an insight into what implications 1971 has for the understandings of apology and forgiveness in relation to the shadowy pasts of Pakistan

In pursuit of the ‘authentic’ Bengali: Impressions and observations of a Contested Diaspora

This article examines the commonalities and differences constructed among different Bengali diasporic communities in London that purport to determine the authenticity of an ethnic Bengali identity. I argue that the ‘dominant’, homogenous discourse of multiculturalism fails to take into account the contestations of Bengali identity based on religion and class. Overall I seek to focus on the processes of objectification whereby various aspects of the Bengali identity are evoked situationally. The role of history, memory, fantasy, narrative and myth is also explored in an attempt to show that difference and commonality is relational