ABSTRACT
This chapter bridges the oral history collected in the form of interviews with history recorded in archives and museums. It analyzes the testimonies of five survivors to highlight the connection between violence endured by women in the war of 1971 and the violence done in the historical narrative. The chapter includes the photographs of the interviewees to challenge the forced anonymity on women’s suffering. Yasmin Saikia notes in her research that the internal, private stories, which deflect from national narratives on the war of 1971, have been subjected to a general erasure and nowhere is that erasure more obvious than in the Liberation War Museum’s display of the refugee crisis. Building on Michel Foucault’s concept of “bio-power” – that domain of life over which power has taken control – historian Achille Mbembe argues that the ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die.
