Thesis
(Re)imagining “Tamilness” within the postcolonial Sri Lankan neoliberal nation state
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2023
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000004978
Abstract
The Sri Lankan civil war (1983-2009) is not simply an ahistorical and apolitical moment of violence rather, it is an extreme consequence of state-sponsored violence. In post-independent Sri Lanka, the escalation of ethnic conflicts between the Sinhala and Tamil people is what ultimately resulted in this bloodthirsty struggle for power and dominance. To navigate the politicized mechanisms behind the civil war and its serious impacts on Sri Lankan society, it is necessary to closely examine fictional work which were written against the violent turmoil of warfare. The novels, Traitor by Antonythasan Jesuthasan (Shobashakthi) and The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam, written against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan civil war (1983-2009), unveil the macabre reality of the idealized conceptualizations of “independence”, “nationalism”, “citizenship”, and “nation-state”. In doing so, the narratives attempt to problematize and dismantle the utopian ideologies propagated by the Sri Lankan state which project their political ideologies as inclusive and beneficial to people in the country. Through the close analysis of these fictitious narratives and the sociopolitical moments that gave rise to this ethnic conflict, it needs to be closely examined how the conception of a “nation” or “homeland” became a politicized and monolithic ideal which excluded and privileged selected groups of people. The novels further foreground how neoliberalism plays a crucial role in essentializing postcolonial developmentalism and modernity. The novels’ references to environmental consequences of warfare will be analyzed with reference to how the neoliberal state deploys devious machinations to deprive people of their “natural” spaces and identities. Thus, the study is an inquiry into the way in which war recreates and reproduces the mainstream conception of the nation and nationalism which inadvertently seeks to produce an anti-nationalist discourse. In this study, I problematize the politicized process of homogenization which denies multiculturalism and linguistic diversity within the post-independent Sri Lankan context. The discussion further foregrounds how the so-called “minority” narratives weave in to construct a strong rhetoric of ethno-nationalism and how these narratives seek to reimagine the Tamil subjectivity within the modern Sri Lankan nation state.
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Details
- Title
- (Re)imagining “Tamilness” within the postcolonial Sri Lankan neoliberal nation state
- Creators
- Rashini Shashikala Daluwatte
- Contributors
- Nishant Shahani (Advisor)Donna Potts (Committee Member)Desiree Hellegers (Committee Member)Pavithra Narayanan (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- English, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 127
- Identifiers
- 99901019536901842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis