Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ways of memorialising by entering into/acquiring pre-existing meanings as well as resisting and creating news ones. Through two figures -the 'martyr' and his 'widow' I look at ways of remembering the 'martyr' and the present self of the subject as a witness

Paper long abstract:

"Widow" or "widowhood" and its representation in symbols is a visible part of our everyday. Beginning with the symbolic representation of widowhood in the breaking of bangles in Bollywood movies with the image always bordering on atrocious even tacitly suggesting the complicity of the woman. Indeed active encouragement of dis-adornment seems to be one of the first acts committed to a woman who has lost her husband. What I am trying to draw through the paper not only the idea of 'widowhood' and 'martyrs' in the context of military violence and the interplay of gender between these two symbols but also of how the martyr is remembered by his widow. Through two figures, that of the 'martyr' and 'widow' I am attempt to bring up the self referential way of not only being the widow of a 'martyr' but also posing herself in different ways of looking. I intend to do this by choosing the figure of a woman who is neither a widow nor according to her, married to the man who is her present husband. How the subject enters into and acquire pre-existing meanings and also resist them to create news ones though at the same time drawing from the existing arrays of symbols of memorialisation is explored.