ABSTRACT
National archives tend to feed nationalism by creating a national memory of a historic event and thus become historical and political sites of enunciation. They create a repository of public memory and function to remind people of the common suffering encountered by the collectivity. The images on display at the Liberation War Museum of Bangladesh offer an opening into the dominant constructs of gender and womanhood in that society. The photographs of women on display at the War Museum offer insights into the national memory of the war in which women were either raped and killed, took up arms to fight for the nation, or became refugees. These images taken, transmitted and preserved in the media are raised to a canonical status and are used frequently to create social and political impact. Moreover, in all of the iconic images of genocide that exist in circulation today, there is a forced generalization of violence against a group of people.
