The “Dead and Their Double Duties”

Abstract

Memorialization of valor and losses through war memorials unquestioningly presume that material objects stand for and embody memory. In exploring this relationship, this article focuses on the evocation of mourning and melancholia in the annual commemorations at the site of two war memorials dedicated to the Martyred Intellectuals of the Bangladesh War of 1971. Following a discussion of the increased ethnographic reconceptualization of culture in spatialized ways, the article examines the role of the built environment in simulating an emotional experience for its visitors. The article argues that the different evocations of mourning and melancholia at these memorials are a reflection of the middle-class aesthetics and the political trajectory of Bangladesh since the 1971 war and in the present. This highlights the links among memorialization, the current socio-political condition, differing practices and responses of the visitors, and the historicity of the urban spaces in which the memorials are situated.