Aurality of images in graphic ethnographies: Sexual violence during wars and memories of the feelings of fear

Mookherjee, Nayanika

doi:10.1177/00380261221108843

Aurality of images in graphic ethnographies: Sexual violence during wars and memories of the feelings of fear

Mookherjee, Nayanika

Authors

Professor Nayanika Mookherjee nayanika.mookherjee@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

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 these images in their colours, visuality and contexts which are not brought out by words and texts alone. The article explores the new sociographies that emerge from this intercitationality of visceral fear, from the aurality of this dread, that survivors of sexual violence during the Bangladesh war of 1971 feel till today. It suggests that we need to go beyond the search for the ‘unsayable and unseeable’ to understand how survivors and their quotidian existence are intertwined with these objects of fear. Nothing is unseeable or unsayable for survivors here as they live through fear ‘as an environment’. The article explores the intertextual, intercitational registers between my book The Spectral Wound and my co-authored graphic novel, Birangona, in order to bring out the reparative aspects of graphic ethnography and the new forms of knowledge production.

Citation

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

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	May 10, 2022
Publication Date	2022-07
Deposit Date	Jul 13, 2022
Publicly Available Date	Jul 13, 2022
Journal	Sociological Review
Print ISSN	0038-0261
Electronic ISSN	1467-954X
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	70
Issue	4
Pages	686-699
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261221108843

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).