Paper short abstract:

This paper explores affective responses to genocidal exhibits in the Bangladesh Liberation War Museum. The role of cosmopolitan recognition is addressed to theorise what impact this has on the claims to Bangladeshi citizenship. This allows an exploration of the ownership of affect and the nation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to explore the affective aesthetics that is generated through the perceptions of 'genocidal' horrors in relation to tropes like 'never again', accounts of sexual violence during wars, engagement with war memorials and museums commemorating such atrocities. The search for juridical and moral justice linked to events of conflict and violence in the 20th and 21st Century is aptly captured by the phrase 'never again' first evoked in the context of the Holocaust and thereafter articulated in various instances of conflict. The paper examines the cosmopolitan moral and aesthetic orientations through which such tropes come to represent the horrors of the Bangladesh War of 1971 in the case of the Bangladesh Liberation War Museum. Established on the basis of a template of Holocaust Museums the paper hopes to highlight the cosmopolitan connections implicit in the accounts of sexual violence and the representation of atrocities in this museum and its implications on Bangladeshi citizenship. Through a study of exhibits and visitors to this museum, the paper examines how links and identification with global 'genocidal' tropes arising from other instances of violent conflict - namely the Holocaust and Rwanda, alter the processes of ownership and appropriation of emotions towards, belonging to and claims on the nation-state. Does cosmopolitan recognition and linkages with such 'genocidal' horrors lead to the development of an affective, panhuman citizenship? What ethico-political implications does this have for engagements with instances of violence and conflict?