Turning the Tables: Narrative of Supermen, Diminished Men, Cultural Memory, and Imagined Community in Post-July Uprising Bangladesh

The July 2024 Uprising in Bangladesh represents a significant turning point, challenging the utopian literate tradition of modernity, Enlightenment, rationalism, and national uniformity. This paper adopts a practice-oriented approach to examine the uprising, emphasizing the complex relationships among abstract cultural memory, temporality, and the commodification of victimhood, heroism, and oppression within the context of cultural and political memory-making. This paper highlights the significance of iterative, cyclical, lived experiences and social memory in shaping the present and future by transcending reductionist perspectives and memory abstraction. It critiques the erosion of local ethical frameworks and the bureaucratic encroachment on civil rights, revealing how political and cultural industries following Western tradition can marginalize communal voices through otherization or so-called inclusive politics. In contrasting institutional narratives with grassroots perspectives, this study advocates for a nuanced understanding of identity politics that transcends simplistic binaries. It positions the July Uprising as a paradigmatic shift, reexamining how it redefines the political grand narrative of cultural memory in temporal and spatial dimensions. While critiquing the commodification of victimhood, struggle, and heroism, the paper recognizes the potential role of practice in resisting universalist discourses related to identity, religion, and territory. Additionally, the analysis revisits the collective memory of the Liberation War, illustrating how grand politicized accounts have often eclipsed its humanistic qualities. Ultimately, this research underscores the necessity of reclaiming the relevance of practices that bridge the past, present, and future, fostering meaningful engagement with cultural interconnectedness. By situating the uprising within a broader context of temporality and social memory, the findings offer critical insights into Bangladesh's evolving socio-political and cultural dynamics, emphasizing the role of tradition and social memory as vital spaces of resistance against grand cultural and national narratives.