ABSTRACT

The “cultural turn” in memory studies acknowledges that collective memory has a distinctive social aspect reflected in the manner in which it is communicated orally from one individual or generation to another. However, the point of departure is the emphasis on the need to account for the fact that memory is, in equal measure, shaped and mediated by tangible channels such as texts, images, objects, rituals, buildings and so on. The interactions and intersections between these two strands of approaching collective memory have been employed to write the most human and engaging histories of trauma and displacement – especially in the context of the Holocaust. This article takes this discussion forward by critically looking at the scope of the field of memory studies – with its largely Western frames of reference – to facilitate a deeper understanding of similar engagements and entanglements between communicative and culturally tangible forms of collective memory in South Asia. It looks at the ways in which the dominant discourse of nationalism is constructed and contested through the politics inherent in memorialization and memory in the South Asian context by comparing the partition of 1947 that resulted in the creation of Pakistan and the Liberation War of 1971 which gave birth to Bangladesh. Through a review of some important recent works of scholarship on the long, complex and intertwined afterlife of the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, this article shows how the processes of the construction and contestation of a dominant discourse of nationalism and nationhood are fraught with their own forms of remembrance and forgetting. And yet they speak in a language of exceptionalism that mirrors a somewhat universal template for remembering “difficult pasts” characteristic of the memorial landscape of the Holocaust. Finally, it is argued that the interstices of “national memory” contain voices that unsettle or counter it. Acknowledging these voices while also recognizing their own memory politics shall broaden and nuance the dominant modes of memorializing the partition and the Liberation War in a way that better reflects the specificities and complexities of their context.

摘要

记忆研究中的“文化转向”承认集体记忆具有独特的社会方面，反映在它从一个人或一代人口头交流的方式上。然而，出发点是强调需要考虑这样一个事实，即记忆在同等程度上由文本、图像、物体、仪式、建筑物等有形渠道塑造和调节。这两条接近集体记忆的线索之间的相互作用和交叉被用来书写最人性化和引人入胜的创伤和流离失所历史——尤其是在大屠杀的背景下。本文通过批判性地审视记忆研究领域的范围（其主要是西方的参考框架）来推进这一讨论，以促进对南亚集体记忆的交流和文化上有形的形式之间的类似参与和纠缠的更深入理解。通过比较导致巴基斯坦成立的 1947 年分治和 1971 年解放战争，在南亚语境中，通过纪念和记忆中固有的政治建构和争夺民族主义的主导话语的方式。出生于孟加拉国。通过回顾一些近期关于 1947 年印度次大陆分裂和 1971 年孟加拉国解放战争漫长、复杂和交织的来世的重要学术著作，本文展示了民族主义和民族地位的主导话语的建构和争论过程如何充满了他们自己的记忆和遗忘形式。然而，他们以一种例外论的语言说话，这种语言反映了记忆大屠杀纪念景观所特有的“艰难的过去”的普遍模板。最后，有人认为“国家记忆”的空隙中包含着令人不安或反抗的声音。承认这些声音，同时也承认他们自己的记忆政治，将扩大和细微差别纪念分裂和解放战争的主要模式，以更好地反映其背景的特殊性和复杂性。