The Symbolic Survival of the “Living Dead”: Narrating the LTTE Female Fighter in Post-war Sri Lankan Women’s Writing (original) (raw)
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Legacies of war in current diasporic Sri Lankan women's writing
An International Journal of Asian Literatures, Cultures and Englishes, 2016
Since the end of the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict, Sri Lankan writers have sought to come to terms with the long-running war and its violent conclusion. This essay considers three recent novels by Sri Lankan diasporic women: Nayomi Munaweera’s Island of a Thousand Mirrors (2012), Chandani Lokuge’ s Softly , As I Leave You ( 2012) and Minoli Salgado’s A Little Dust on the Eyes (2014). Each of these novels focuses on the trauma of the war and the way that the war has affected and continues to affect those in the diaspora as well as in the homeland. Moreover, the novels provide a comparative view of the diaspora’s relation to the war, as Munaweera is resident in North America, Salgado in the United Kingdom, and Lokuge in Australia. In keeping with this issue’s theme – “from compressed worlds to open spaces” – my essay explores how South Asian women writers address the Sri Lankan war in the open spaces of the transnational Sri Lankan diaspora. As all three novels suggest, the end of the m...
Journal of International Women's Studies, 2019
The increasing visibility of armed women in violent conflicts in the modern world has unsettled conventional beliefs of inferiority, weakness, innocence, and the resultant fragility and victimhood of women. Although in theory it is possible to conceptualize armed woman and violence as empowerment, in practice, the temporal realities that inevitably haunt any discussion of ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorists’ in conflict ridden polarized societies severely curtail the terminology available to frame militancy in general and the ‘terror’ it generates as ‘liberatory’. However, fictional and non-fictional literary work that were published in the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s war (1983-2009) between the state forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) seem to push the boundaries of the discourse on women, violence, and terror. This paper analyzes the representation of armed women in The Seasons of Trouble (Mohan, 2014), Island of a Thousand Mirrors (Munaweera, 2014), Tamil Tigress (De Soyza, 2013), and Under the Shadow of a Sharp Edged Sword (trans.) (Jeyakumaran, 2016) with the assumption that the genres of auto/biography and fiction offer an alternative archive within which seemingly polarized ‘truths’ entrenched in nationalist conflicts can be explored in their nuanced complexity. This paper assesses how literary portrayals of female militancy vis-à-vis violence, empowerment, and victimhood challenge conventional history and narratives and, in doing so, contribute to expand the boundaries of our understanding of female militancy in times of violent conflict. In conclusion, this paper suggests that the location of violence and female militancy within an ambivalent space of agency in narrative literature may also entail an unsettling of conventional figurations of war in gendered terms.
The Faculty Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Volume 08, Issue 01, 2019
Representation of women in war is an interesting subject which has prompted many debates and discussions, especially in relation to the female suicide bombers. There are those who argue that it offers agency for Tamil women, as the female militant/suicide bomber enjoys a degree of freedom where she gets to access the public sphere, carry weapons, fight and even decide to sacrifice her body for a cause. However, this is just an illusion of freedom that seeks to deceive the Tamil woman. While Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) publically denounced male chauvinistic oppression, violence, the dowry system and casteism, it tightened its control over the body and sexuality of the militants. Thus, the female militant/suicide bomber became the ‘new Tamil woman’, who lived within an illusion of freedom without real agency, as exemplified through the literary analysis adopted from Rajeswari Sunder Rajan. Saraswathi’s character in the novel Island of a ‘Thousand Mirrors’ by Nayomi Munaweera was closely analysed to exemplify this contention. Accordingly, it was identified that dominant modes of ideologies constructed the ‘new Tamil woman’, to further their patriarchal and nationalistic goals, where the Tamil woman is manipulated and ultimately becomes a mere pawn. Thus, the female militant/suicide bomber represented only an illusion of freedom as the ‘new Tamil woman’, while in reality she belongs to a metaphorical prison of control.
Militiarizing Bodies: Transcending the Female Psyche in Niromi de Soyza's Tamil Tigress
Samyukta: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 2023
Women are often marked as the most vulnerable group in any population, simply because discourses on women center around victimhood and economic responsibility. They are branded as a peace-loving population who naturally abhor violence and are often the victims of violation and sexual assault. The intake of female participants as combatants in the LTTE for their fight against the government was a reassurance for women to gain empowerment and break the clutches of patriarchal domination that wrung around them. LTTE was known for its notoriety and the women tigers in its forces. Many female combatants in the rebel paramilitary force were either abducted or forced to join it. The paper is an examination into the role played by female combatants in the LTTE through the memoir of Niromi De Soyza's Tamil Tigress: My Story as a Child Soldier in Sri Lanka's Bloody Civil War (2011). The book is an autobiographical first hand narration of a guerilla woman soldier who tries to understand her position as an empowered woman-a sacred virgin for the plight of the nation and later redemption. The paper tries to understand how the acceptance into the group of militant combatants affected the gendered crisis associated to a woman. It is an unravelling of the psyche of a woman soldier in the traumatic throes of a nation burdened by three decade long civil strife.
Woman as Gendered Subject and other Discourses in Contemporary Sri Lankan Fiction in English
1984
Sri Lankan literature in English is not a major player in the country's mass media scenario.1 Those who choose to write in English are people who, through education and family background, have their roots in the history of English as the language of colonialism and socio-economic privilege in Sri Lanka, and, consequently, belong to a very small group. Failure to teach English as a vital second or third language, along with continuing institutional marginalization of Sri Lankan English, have meant that only a handful of writers are confident and fluent enough to write in English? The lack of a large reading public for books in English results in commercial reluctance by major publishers to publish more than one, or at the most, two books per year. Those writing in English are forced therefore to publish privately, or collectively through The English Writer's Cooperative. They may also look to an interested NGO, or put their faith in the Arts Council of Sri Lanka which, after ...
Journal of International Women S Studies, 2007
Over the last decade, females have been an integral part of fighting forces in both international conflicts and in armed struggle in at least 38 internal conflicts. While some scholars argue that recent wars have thrust women into new roles, enabling them to transform their social situations, identities and destinies, others question whether females achieve 'emancipation' through active participation in warfare. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka that has been engaged in conflict with the Sri Lankan government since 1983, and actively recruits female cadres, provides an interesting context to explore issues of female empowerment in the context of armed struggle. Drawing from interviews with four Sri Lankans living in Canada, this paper traces the perceived extent of female emancipation within the LTTE. While the participation of females in unconventional military roles represents a drastic change in behaviour expected of Tamil women, the militant movement appears to reinforce existing patterns of gender constructions, ultimately impeding the attainment of meaningful empowerment for females.
Women & the Nation's Narrative: Gender and Nationalism in Twentieth Century Sri Lanka
2001
Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Setting the Stage, Gendering the Nation: John de Silva's Nationalist Theatre and the Entrance of Anie Boteju Chapter 3 Framing the Nation's Respectability: Anil Marcia de Silva's Rite of Passage Chapter 4 A Question of Identity: Jean Arasanayagam's Landscape of the Nation Chapter 5 Agent or Victim? The Sri Lanka Woman Militant in the Interregnum Chapter 6 Crossing the Issues-Mother Politics and Women's Politics: Notes on the Contemporary Sri Lanka Women's Movement
A Feminist Reading on the Freedom Fighters of Tamil Tiger: Based on Selected Writings
International Peace Research Institute , 2019
The protracted civil war between the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) came to end in 2009 by defeating the LTTE militarily. Since 2009, the GOSL has focused on liberal peacebuilding through the policy of rehabilitation, reintegration and reconstruction (Thiranagama, 2011; Salter, 2015; Stokke and Uyangoda, 2012). After the war ended, the LTTE also became a spot of light in research stream.The narratives of the LTTE members basically reveal the everyday life of the rebellion in the liberation movement. The key objective of this paper is to understand the narrations and perceptions of the former LTTE combatants on their lives and struggle. The paper, thereby, examines the LTTE point of view on human rights, peacebuilding and freedom. In addition, the paper explores how the women's role has been constructed in the liberation movement.