Disrupting Genocide: Restoring The ‘Potential History’ Of The Rohingya

Dr Greg Constantine

Over the last five decades, the world in which the Rohingya community from Myanmar (Burma) once existed has been destroyed. Today, nearly all visual representations of the Rohingya portray a people defined by displacement, violence, victimhood and genocide. An alternative visual history of the Rohingya has been totally lost.

Drawing on photographs, documents, letters and illustrations displaced and fragmented across the Rohingya diaspora or buried and lying dormant in public and private archives, this project aims to contribute toward re-visualizing a history that remains absent from the public sphere. The project will explore and locate these artefacts and assemble and present an alternative visual portrait and form to Rohingya history. It seeks to facilitate in the ‘unlearning’ of Rohingya identity currently fixed in contemporary visual representations of the Rohingya and present a ‘potential history’ of the Rohingya within the collective memory of those in Burma and beyond.

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