From: "Jalais,A" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS -AAA, CHICAGO, NOV 19-23
Date: Mon, Mar 24, 2003, 3:04 pm

> Dear All,
> Some friends of mine (please see names below) and myself are organising a
panel for the AAA. Its about memory and state-making in Bengal (please read
abstract below). We're looking for two more people to join us as presenters
-so please join in or send this to friends or students who might be
interested in this topic. We need to have the abstracts (250 words) of
those interested by Thursday (27th March).
> Best Wishes,
> Annu
>
> Proposal for Panel: Forgetting Bengal
> Taking cue from anthropology> '> s increasing concern with the peoples
and histories from the margins, this panel focuses on ethnographies of/on
Bangladesh- a periphery in the scholarship on South Asia. Stretching the
topic of > "> partition,> ">  an otherwise recurrent thematic in this
particular context, the papers in this panel will speak of this side of
Bengal as > "> multiply-partitioned.> ">  A complex interplay of religion,
ethnicity, and national identity crosscuts its cultural topography that
offers theoretical insights into the politics of history and memory in the
region at large. In exploring the political implications of memories, it is
crucial to investigate how acts of remembering also entail forgetting and
the processes that maintain such amnesic elisions. Indeed in the context of
Bangladesh, a motif of > "> partition> ">  can be extended to discuss the
various amnesias that have been nurtured at various points to sustain the
metanarratives of the state. The emergence of Bangladesh was subjected to
selective retrospections that privileged certain voices over others. It is
crucial then to understand how certain remembrances become nationalist
tropes through which various groups legitimize their power. How
> does remembering help consolidate or question the nationhood of
Bangladesh? Who is allowed to participate in the production of national
meanings? Attending both to the nation> '> s past as well its present, the
panel will raise such critical questions that reveal the anxieties over >
"> re-membering> ">  the contour of the nation.
>
> The objectives of the panel are, (a) to have Bangladesh considered as an
ethnographic site with similar ethnographic possibilities as the rest of
South Asia, and (b) to use the unique theoretical challenges offered
through the case
> of Bangladesh to shed light on the existing scholarship on Bengal, and
South Asia, at large.
>
> Following is a brief description of the presenters and their proposed
paper topics:
>
> * Tahmima Anam (Harvard University) will present a paper on the history
of the Indemnity bill in Bangladesh as a program for systematic (and legal)
collective forgettings;
> * Nusrat Chowdhury (University of Chicago), will present on the
construction of East Pakistan as an > "> other> ">  in the West Pakistani
press in the early > '> 70s.
> * Nauman Naqvi (Columbia University) will be discussing how President
Bhutto, and the Pakistani elite at large, imagined > "> Bangladesh> ">  on
the eve of the war of Independence of 1971.
> * Annu Jalais (LSE) will speak on the 1979 Marichjhapi massacre in the
Sundarbans mangrove forest and its repercussions on the way people in the
Sundarbans view the state and their position as second class citizens who
come after tigers;