CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Nanda, Preetika |
|---|---|
| Title | An Archive of Witnessing: Unraveling the Indian State through Memoryscapes of Punjab |
| Summary | This thesis is about Punjab- a border state in northern India which was embroiled in heightened violent conflict from 1984 to 1995. Through this research, I attempt to study the Indian state from the vantage point of two memoryscapes: the dominant/national memory vis-à-vis Punjab and the collective/counter memory formations of the Sikh community in Punjab. In doing so this thesis will look at the proceedings of the National Human Rights Commission and its treatment of mass atrocities in Punjab through Foucauldian biopolitics and governmentality. The ‘meta-archive’ of NHRC’s case file reiterates the popular and totalizing discourse on counter-insurgency war in Punjab, as a “defeat of terrorism” , a restoration of order and normalcy. It is imbued with power to effectively elide and depoliticize social suffering, shaping societal opinion and a replication of its institutional practice. Latter half, of the thesis delves into the bloodied ramifications on the life worlds of the People of Punjab, a fragment of which I have tried to recover by wording their memories and embodied experiences. Beginning from reflections on brief vignettes on collective memory and its manifestation in things people preserve, I extend Foucault’s concept of counter-memory to counter-archives and look at documentation as sites of potential resistance. In the last section, I delineate the relationship between space, violence and memory, followed by an illustrative account on performing memorialization in sacred space and potential for protest. |
| Supervisor | Rajaram, Prem Kumar |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/nanda_preetika.pdf |
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