Citation

Heidemann B. J. Commonwealth Lit. 2019; 54(3): 384-398.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0021989417723414

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article examines the lingering presence of the female militant figure in post-war Sri Lankan women's writing in English. Through a careful demarcation of the formal-aesthetic limits of engaging with the country's competing ethno-nationalisms, the article seeks to uncover the gendered hierarchies of Sri Lanka's civil war in two literary works: Niromi de Soyza's autobiography Tamil Tigress (2011) and Nayomi Munaweera's debut novel Island of a Thousand Mirrors (2012). The reading draws attention to the writers' attempt to "historise" the LTTE female fighter and/or suicide bomber within Sri Lanka's complex colonial past and its implications for the recent history of conflict. The individual motives of the female fighters to join the LTTE, the article contends, remain ideologically susceptible to, if not interpellated by, the gendered hierarchies both within the military movement and Tamil society at large. A literary portrait of such entangled hierarchies in post-war Sri Lankan texts, the article reveals, helps expose the hegemonic (male) discourses of Sri Lankan nationalism that tend to undermine the war experiences of women. © The Author(s) 2017.

Language: en

Keywords

gender; war; Sri Lanka; LTTE; Achille Mbembe; female militant; Nayomi Munaweera; Niromi de Soyza