The symbolic survival of the “living dead”: Narrating the LTTE female fighter in post-war Sri Lankan women’s writing

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.

Navigating Sri Lankan Identity in A State of Crisis: The Role of the Creative Imaginary

“…Both writers are perceived as those who represent the "paradoxes of Sri Lankan Anglophone Literature as they address both the majority and the minority while also acknowledging ethnic identity politics (Jayasuriya and Halpe, 2012). Munaweera's imaginary, namely through the mirrored portrayal of Saraswathi, the Tamil girl enlisted by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and Yasodhra, the Sinhalese protagonist, provides the presentation of "a balanced perspective on Sri Lanka's polarized political identities at different stages of the war" (Heidemann, 2019). Island of a Thousand Mirrors is identified as a novel that provides a heavy emphasis on the lived experiences of the characters as they find themselves bound by the sea and the inhabitants of the island of Sri Lanka (Amarasekera and Pillai, 2016).…”