ABSTRACT
I am often asked by others about what I work on: I respond that I work on the public memories of wartime sexual violence. This response to my answer – “Memory! How would you know it is true?” – not only hints at the perceived unreliability of memory: this comment also reminds us that the evidence, sources and processes of historical memory – primarily through human recall in the past or present – are often suspected of being incorrect, imagined or constructed and, hence, questionable sources of evidence. In this context, where the validity of memory as evidence of a past is often interrogated, how are memories of violent events remembered, forgotten or remembered to be forgotten (Mookherjee 2006)? This is more so the case as the recall of violent events is always deemed to be difficult and fragmented. More specifically, what are the artefacts through which violent memories are recalled? How do they become part of history? What is the relationship between history and memory?
