Paper short abstract:

This paper relates the agency of objects, the distributed person and the transnational experience. Through an ethnography of the construction of a replica of the Shaheed Minar in central Lisbon, the argument is that this sculpture remakes nationalist imaginaries and social ties, at home and abroad.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing inspiration on the works of Alfred Gell and Bruno Latour, this paper will reveal the relation between the agency of material objects - namely their capacity to act and shape the contexts surrounding them - the distributed person and the transnational experience. These themes will be empirically explored through an ethnography of the (occasional) construction of a small replica of the Shaheed Minar - the martyrs memorial located in Dhaka University - in a central square in downtown Lisbon. The main argument is that this sculpture not only reproduces the aesthetics of a specific nationalist imaginary about the desh but simultaneously enables the making of ties between persons, present and past, at home and abroad.