Silent Hostilities: An Affective and Intermedial Study of Tanaïs’s in Sensorium: Notes for My People

The gendered nature of war and conflicts has been an area of critical feminist intervention. Following the Partition from British India in 1947 and subsequent Liberation from Pakistan in 1971, Bangladesh experienced profound and multifaceted trauma in the form of political control, displacement, ethnic discrimination, and gender-based violence. Women and femmes, especially, were violated, both physically and psychologically. Post-war, their testimonies and stories were barely made visible. The collective memory of these protracted, violent postcolonial conflicts continues to shape the modern Bangladeshi identity across space and time through intermedial entanglements.

To understand this traveling nature of violence across generations and borders, this study explores the memoir In Sensorium: Notes for My People (2022) by Tanaïs (they/them), an American-Bangladeshi Muslim Queer Femme writer and perfumer. Using an intermedial approach, Tanaïs weaves a palpable image of the gender-based violence in Bangladeshi history, its subsequent erasure, and its continued effects by interlacing their personal experiences, cultural identity, and South Asian perfume history with connotations of inherited ancestral trauma. Affect studies have made it possible to delve into the rich emotional landscapes of lived experiences. It is particularly pertinent to women and femmes interacting with their home and host cultures in an intermediary state. The study reflects on silence as an affective tool and its long-term violent effects on the author’s intersectional identity. This analysis also adds to the value and need of memoirs as a site of affective memory as well as a device for resistance and recovery.

Keywords: silence, intergenerational trauma, Bangladesh, memoirs, gender-based violence