Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Professor Nayanika Mookherjee's Outputs (63)

The presence of abandonment: Left to live at the borderland of Lampedusa (2024)
Journal Article
Corso, A., & Mookherjee, N. (2024). The presence of abandonment: Left to live at the borderland of Lampedusa. American Anthropologist, 126(4), 622-634. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.28016

Drawing from the extensive literature on the anthropology of borders and border death in and beyond Europe, this article ethnographically explores the processes through which irregular migrants and locals at the borderland of Lampedusa (south of Sici... Read More about The presence of abandonment: Left to live at the borderland of Lampedusa.

‘Occupying’ the womb: Disrupted kinship futures and sovereign logics in sexual violence during wars (2023)
Journal Article
Mookherjee, N. (2023). ‘Occupying’ the womb: Disrupted kinship futures and sovereign logics in sexual violence during wars. Critique of Anthropology, 43(4), 422-443. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X231216250

This article seeks to ethnographically highlight the multiple uses of gene/alogy (as explored by Franklin and McKinnon in the 2000s) in the context of the Bangladesh war of 1971, and hence maps out the range of violence and ambivalences at the heart... Read More about ‘Occupying’ the womb: Disrupted kinship futures and sovereign logics in sexual violence during wars.

1971: Pakistan's Past and Knowing What Not to Narrate (2023)
Book Chapter
Mookherjee, N. (2023). 1971: Pakistan's Past and Knowing What Not to Narrate. In A. Ali, & K. Asdar Ali (Eds.), Towards People's Histories in Pakistan: In(Audible) Voices, Forgotten Pasts (79-94). Bloomsbury Academic

Comics as a Tool for Research on Gender Violence. Interview with Nayanika Mookherjee on the Graphic Novel Birangona. Towards Ethical Testimonies of Sexual Violence during Conflict (2019) (2022)
Journal Article
Mandolini, N., & Mookherjee, N. (2022). Comics as a Tool for Research on Gender Violence. Interview with Nayanika Mookherjee on the Graphic Novel Birangona. Towards Ethical Testimonies of Sexual Violence during Conflict (2019). Vista, 10, Article e022011. https://doi.org/10.21814/vista.4109

A banda desenhada e o recente formato de romance gráfico estão entre as formas de arte que os investigadores escolheram para divulgar e fornecer uma representação visual do seu trabalho. Esta relação entre banda desenhada e a investigação, que faz pa... Read More about Comics as a Tool for Research on Gender Violence. Interview with Nayanika Mookherjee on the Graphic Novel Birangona. Towards Ethical Testimonies of Sexual Violence during Conflict (2019).

Aurality of images in graphic ethnographies: Sexual violence during wars and memories of the feelings of fear (2022)
Journal Article
Mookherjee, N. (2022). Aurality of images in graphic ethnographies: Sexual violence during wars and memories of the feelings of fear. Sociological Review, 70(4), 686-699. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261221108843

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 thes... Read More about Aurality of images in graphic ethnographies: Sexual violence during wars and memories of the feelings of fear.

On Irreconciliation (2022)
Book
Mookherjee, N. (Ed.). (2022). On Irreconciliation. Wiley

On Irreconciliation focuses on the less examined but frequent ethnographic instances when survivors refuse to forgive in response to persistent impunity of past injustices, particularly, in the face of absence-presence of the rule of law and staged p... Read More about On Irreconciliation.

Irreconcilable times (2022)
Journal Article
Mookherjee, N. (2022). Irreconcilable times. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 28(S1), 153-178. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13760

In Denktagebuch (Thought diary, 1950-73), Hannah Arendt wrote that acts which cannot be forgiven are beyond punishment and hence cannot be reconciled to. In this essay, I draw from Arendt to further theorize and extend the concept of irreconciliation... Read More about Irreconcilable times.

Introduction: On irreconciliation (2022)
Journal Article
Mookherjee, N. (2022). Introduction: On irreconciliation. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 28(S1), 11-33. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13751

Most post-conflict reconciliatory exercises make it incumbent upon survivors to forgive, and seek closure as a demonstration of ‘moving on’. Various anthropologists have criticized reconciliation and related forms of ‘alternative justice’ extensively... Read More about Introduction: On irreconciliation.

‘Medicine in Name Only’: Mistrust and COVID-19 Among the Crowded Rohingya Refugee Camps in Bangladesh (2022)
Journal Article
Islam, S. N. E., Mookherjee, N., & Khan, N. (2022). ‘Medicine in Name Only’: Mistrust and COVID-19 Among the Crowded Rohingya Refugee Camps in Bangladesh. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 9(2), 1-32. https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.9.2.5424

This article is an anthropological examination of the health-seeking behaviours of Rohingya refugees living in crowded camps in Bangladesh, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. One international organisation providing medical care in the Kutupalo... Read More about ‘Medicine in Name Only’: Mistrust and COVID-19 Among the Crowded Rohingya Refugee Camps in Bangladesh.

Historicising the Birangona: Interrogating the Politics of Commemorating the Wartime Rape of 1971 in the context of the 50th Anniversary of Bangladesh (2022)
Journal Article
Mookherjee, N. (2022). Historicising the Birangona: Interrogating the Politics of Commemorating the Wartime Rape of 1971 in the context of the 50th Anniversary of Bangladesh. Strategic Analysis, 45(6), 588-597. https://doi.org/10.1080/09700161.2021.2009663

Two decades ago, ‘1971’ was deemed to not have a market within Indian publishing houses and media outlets. Yet, one is struck by the contemporary Indian focus on the iconic figure of the Birangona – brave women, a title given by the State of Banglade... Read More about Historicising the Birangona: Interrogating the Politics of Commemorating the Wartime Rape of 1971 in the context of the 50th Anniversary of Bangladesh.

Democracy in Scare Quotes: The Granularity of Control in the Hybrid State of Bangladesh (2021)
Book Chapter
Lacy, M., & Mookherjee, N. (2022). Democracy in Scare Quotes: The Granularity of Control in the Hybrid State of Bangladesh. In A. Ruud, & M. Hasan (Eds.), Masks of authoritarianism: Hegemony, power and public life in Bangladesh (237-246). (1). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4314-9_16

Hybrid cars. Hybrid workplaces. Hybrid war. Hybrid states. We are witnessing today the mixing of elements to create new forms of life, business, work, war and politics. In times of technological, geopolitical, social and political change, the ability... Read More about Democracy in Scare Quotes: The Granularity of Control in the Hybrid State of Bangladesh.

Graphic Ethnography and Generative Resilience of Sexual Violence in Conflict of the Birangonas (War-heroines) in Bangladesh (2021)
Book Chapter
Mookherjee, N. (2021). Graphic Ethnography and Generative Resilience of Sexual Violence in Conflict of the Birangonas (War-heroines) in Bangladesh. In J. Clark, & M. Ungar (Eds.), Resilience, Adaptive Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice: How Societies Recover after Collective Violence. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108919500.007

The use of rape was common during the 1971 war in Bangladesh. Six days after the war ended, the new government publicly declared that any woman raped in the war was a birangona or ‘war heroine’. There exists a public memory of wartime rape through va... Read More about Graphic Ethnography and Generative Resilience of Sexual Violence in Conflict of the Birangonas (War-heroines) in Bangladesh.

‘Firing cannons to kill mosquitoes' : Controlling virtual ‘streets’ and the ‘image of the state’ in Bangladesh (2020)
Journal Article
Lacy, M., & Mookherjee, N. (2020). ‘Firing cannons to kill mosquitoes' : Controlling virtual ‘streets’ and the ‘image of the state’ in Bangladesh. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 54(2), 280-305. https://doi.org/10.1177/0069966720917923

This article examines the historical, social and political legacies of the Information and Communication Technology Act (ICT Act) (2006–2018, amended in 2013) and the Digital Security Act (DSA) (2018–) in the Bangladeshi state’s attempt to control th... Read More about ‘Firing cannons to kill mosquitoes' : Controlling virtual ‘streets’ and the ‘image of the state’ in Bangladesh.

Birangona: towards ethical testimonies of sexual violence during conflict (2019)
Book
Mookherjee, N., & Keya, N. (2019). Birangona: towards ethical testimonies of sexual violence during conflict. Durham University. https://doi.org/10.15128/r1sb3978287

Labonno/Labony needs to do a school project on family memories of 1971, the Bangladesh War. When coming to ask her grandmother, she wakes the latter from one of her frequent nightmares. What follows is her grandmother’s (Nanu/Rehana) narration of the... Read More about Birangona: towards ethical testimonies of sexual violence during conflict.

1971: Pakistan's Past and Knowing What Not to Narrate (2019)
Journal Article
Mookherjee, N. (2019). 1971: Pakistan's Past and Knowing What Not to Narrate. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 39(1), 212-222. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-7493909

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 rare... Read More about 1971: Pakistan's Past and Knowing What Not to Narrate.

‘Memory’ (2018)
Book Chapter
Mookherjee, N. (2018). ‘Memory’. In R. Bleiker (Ed.), Visual global politics. Routledge