The Spectral Wound

"Nayanika Mookherjee has made visible a scene of gendered violence in the Bangladesh War of Liberation that travels beyond its specific context to historical, theoretical, and lived realities that are global in range and scope."  - Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, author of An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization

"Nayanika Mookherjee has produced a brilliant profile of a society grappling with the impact of war centered on rape and its memory. Dealing with rape in war is a political act and memories serve many causes, from the nationalist to the personal. Mookherjee looks at the issue through the lenses of class, culture, and politics, making it one of the most comprehensive and perceptive studies available, as she investigates from within what it means to become an outsider and the socio-political mechanisms that make it happen."  - Afsan Chowdhury, editor of Bangladesh 1971

"What happens when a moment of personal violation becomes appropriated as part of the narrative of a new collectivity? In a subtle and multifaceted analysis, Nayanika Mookherjee tracks the consequences, both personal and political, of acts of sexual violence that refuse to be forgotten four decades on from the war of independence."  - Jonathan Spencer, coauthor of Checkpoint, Temple, Church and Mosque: A Collaborative Ethnography of War and Peace

"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

"I would recommend Spectral Wound if issues of women’s history, resilience and narrative are of interest. It is a fascinating (if challenging) read that provides a discerning exploration of a convoluted, tragic, and largely unheeded episode in South Asian history." - Margot Wilson, Pacific Affairs

"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

"Mookherjee’s approach to the sincere investigation of the lives of violated women of the 1971 war will help academia to find out many hidden truths in the lives of the rape victims." - Priyanka Tripathi, Postcolonial Studies Association Newsletter