Militarizing Sri Lanka: Popular Culture, Memory and Narrative in the Armed Conflict

Militarizing Sri Lanka is a study of the militarization that has buttressed the war between the Sri Lankan state and the LTTE for over two decades. It highlights militarization as a process through which the ideology of militarism is shaped and shared in a manner that makes militant solutions to conflict a part of institutional structures and ways of thought. It foregrounds militarization as activity and agency, capable of adaptation and transforming society in significant ways; and as a deeply gendered, contingent and shifting process. It also analyzes both the construction and resistance to militarization and militarism, but in a manner that draws attention to their relationality rather than as self-evidently oppositional categories. Through case studies of military advertising, disabled soldiers, children in the conflict zones, the LTTE female suicide bomber, censorship, the archive and feminist work, Militarizing Sri Lanka also foregrounds the crucial role of popular culture, memory and narrative in how attitudes to militarism, the war, and peace are mediated. This book is a valuable resource for social and political scientists and activists, and all those wanting an insight into militarization in the Sri Lankan context from the late 1980s to 2006.

Table of Contents:
Constituting Martial Virtue: The Processes of Militarization in Sri Lanka Marketing War, Marketing Peace: Mediating Global Capital and National Security Staging Pain: The Disabled Soldier and the Butterflies Theatre Allegories of War: The Politics of Childhood, Mourning and Melancholia in the Tales of the Butterfly Peace Garden Figure of Speech: The Female Suicide Bomber, Censorship and the Literary–Cinematic Site The Promise of the Archive: Memory, Testimony and Feminist Domains Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Neloufer de Mel is Professor of English at the Department of English, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. She is the author of Women and the Nation’s Narrative: Gender and Nationalism in 20th Century Sri Lanka (Kali for Women, 2001) and co-editor of At the Cutting Edge: Essays in Honour of Kumari Jayawardena (Women Unlimited 2007) and Writing an Inheritance: Women’s Writing in Sri Lanka 1860–1948 (WERC, 2002). She is the recipient of many distinguished research awards, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Research and Writing Grant, a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship at Yale University, and a Ford Associate in Global Women’s Studies Fellowship at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, USA. She has also been a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University, and the Women’s Research Center at the University of Rutgers.  Neloufer de Mel has served on the Regional Advisory Panel of the Social Science Research Council, and serves on the management board of Women and Media Collective, Colombo. She was the founder editor of Options, a journal on Sri Lankan women’s issues, and has published several essays on postcolonial theatre, literature and film.

Review :
"Neloufer de Mel′s Militarizing Sri Lanka radically advances our understanding of the cultural consequences of violence.  This tour de force should be read by all who want to understand the subtle effects of political violence on all aspects of culture, not only in Sri Lanka but elsewhere too." It takes an extraordinary individual to challenge the dominant militarized nationalist core of the state. Sri Lanka has produced some of these extraordinary and courageous intellectuals. Neloufer is one of them. This book is atestimony to and an intervention in this tragedy. De Mel’s work is a dense yet remarkably lucid exposition of a particular, painful context. The analysis of rhetoric and political discourses are broad-based enough to be useful for other scholars working on the similar areas and specific enough to  highlight  the contexts of these identities and subjectivities.…It’s a fine book… De Mel’s Militarizing Sri Lanka will remain a groundbreaking work on Sri Lankan public memory and cultural politics for some years to come. This book is a valuable resource for social, political scientists and activists, and all those interested in an insight into militarization in the Sri Lankan context from the late 1980s to 2006. This book is a very authentic document regarding the process of militarizing by the two warring groups (the LTTE, and the Sri Lankan government) in order to crush one another by force and achieve something which can be otherwise achieved by mutual understanding, dialogue and a policy of give and take’. Militarizing Sri Lanka will remain a groundbreaking work on Sri Lankan public memory and cultural politics for some years to come. Explores the layered and nuanced ways in which armed solutions to conflict become entrenched in and transform society, the individual and the state apparatus. A range of case studies on advertising, popular culture and censorship – even of memory and history – articulately convey the author’s interesting argument. A study of the militarization that has buttressed the war between the Sri Lankan state and the LTTE for over two decades, this book highlights militarization as a process through which the ideology of militarism is shaped and shared in a manner that makes militant solutions to conflict a part of institutional structures and ways of thought.