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Abstract
Located at the intersections of men, masculinity, violence and narrative in the context of conflict-ridden South Asia, this study critically reads the configurations of men and masculinity in a selection of life narratives that revolve around Sri Lanka’s Eelam war (1983–2009). Based on the premise that hegemonic masculine identities shaped and interpellated by statist narratives in times of war are likely to have long-term detrimental impacts on societies, this paper considers life narratives that bring to life specific individual truths as alternative archives that could be sites of interruption, subversion and alternative imagination. This paper offers a critical feminist reading of the configurations of masculinities in Rohini Mohan’s The Seasons of Trouble (2014) and Ajith Boyagoda and Sunila Galappatti’s A Long Watch (2016), and explores the complex interactions among masculinity and violence that subvert dominant framings of men and masculinity and thereby help resist post-war patriarchal political revivals.
Acknowledgements
I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Neloufer De Mel who oversaw my post-graduate research from which I have drawn extensively in writing this paper. The guidance and insights of Professor Stefan Horlacher too have been invaluable in strengthening my research in the field of masculinity studies. Further, I sincerely appreciate the insightful comments of the reviewers that helped sharpen the analytical observations and conclusions drawn in this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Kimberly Hutchings, ‘Making Sense of Masculinity and War’, Men and Masculinities 10, no. 4 (2008): 389–404; 391, https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X07306740.
2. Sanjay Srivastava, ‘Modi-Masculinity: Media, Manhood, and “Traditions” in a Time of Consumerism’, Television and New Media 16, no. 4 (2015): 331–38, https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476415575498; Seba Siddiqui et al., ‘Emboldened by Modi’s Ascent, India’s Cow Vigilantes Deny Muslims Their Livelihood’, Reuters, November 6, 2017, accessed March 12, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/india-politics-religion-cows/; and Sujatha Subramanian, ‘Is Hindutva Masculinity on Social Media Producing a Culture of Violence against Women and Muslims?’, Economic & Political Weekly 54, no. 15 (2019), accessed March 3, 2021, https://www.epw.in/engage/article/hindutva-masculinity-social-media-producing-violence-against-women-muslims.
3. Neloufer De Mel, Militarizing Sri Lanka: Popular Culture, Memory and Narrative in the Armed Conflict (New Delhi: Sage, 2007): 25.
4. Connell defines hegemonic masculinity as ‘the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women’. The ‘currently accepted’ strategy in the context of war would involve, then, an institutionally backed, ‘narrowly defined masculinity which will make its bearer efficient in producing the organization’s effects of violence’: see Raewyn Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005): 77, 259.
5. Hutchings, ‘Making Sense of Masculinity and War’: 389.
6. De Mel, Militarizing Sri Lanka.
7. Adam Jones, ‘Gendercide and Genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research 2, no. 2 (2000): 185–211, doi:10.1080/713677599; Charli Carpenter, ‘Recognizing Gender-Based Violence against Civilian Men and Boys in Conflict Situations’, Security Dialogue 37, no. 1 (2006): 83–103, accessed January 12, 2020, www.jstor.org/stable/26299474; and Kimberly Theidon, ‘Reconstructing Masculinities: The Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration of Former Combatants in Colombia’, Human Rights Quarterly 31, no. 1 (2009): 1–34; 2, accessed March 22, 2022, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20486735.
8. Henry Myrttinen, Lana Khattab and Jana Naujoks, ‘Re-thinking Hegemonic Masculinities in Conflict-Affected Contexts’, Critical Military Studies 3, no. 2 (2017): 103–19, doi:10.1080/23337486.2016.1262658.
9. Luisa Ortega, ‘Looking beyond Violent Militarized Masculinities’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 14, no. 4 (2012): 489–506; 490, doi:10.1080/14616742.2012.726094; and Claire Duncanson, ‘Forces for Good? Narratives of Military Masculinity in Peacekeeping Operations’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 11, no. 1 (2009): 63–80, doi:10.1080/14616740802567808.
10. Ann-Dorte Christensen and Palle Rasmussen, ‘War, Violence and Masculinities: Introduction and Perspectives’, NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies 10, nos. 3–4 (2015): 189–202; 189, doi:10.1080/18902138.2015.1113675.
11. De Mel, Militarizing Sri Lanka, 12.
12. The crux of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s presidential election campaign in 2005 was the promise to aggressively eradicate the LTTE—he thus took on the mantle of the aggressive defender and saviour of the people. In post-war Sri Lanka, he won a second term in office from 2010 to 2015: his projected identity welded together the historical mythology of the heroic Sinhalese kings who defeated the invading Tamil kings and the trope of the stern and protective father, the patriarch that would guide the country to post-war prosperity with a steady hand. The Rajapaksa family lost power in the 2015 presidential election only to return to power in 2019 with Mahinda’s younger brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, as president. In the wake of the Easter attacks, Gotabaya’s comprehensive victory was founded on aggressively nationalist rhetoric and the accompanying militarist persona he projected as a former army officer capable of aggressively defending the Sinhala Buddhist nation. In each of these cases, except for the 2010 election in which the opposing candidate was a decorated army general, the campaigns actively involved ridiculing the masculine identities of rival candidates as ‘impotent’, ‘spineless’ and ‘cowardly’.
13. Cynthia Cockburn and Dubravka Zarkov, The Postwar Moment: Militaries, Masculinities and International Peacekeeping, Bosnia and Netherlands (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2002).
14. Chulani Kodikara, ‘Sinhala Buddhist Nationalist Discourse and Women in Post War Sri Lanka’, Options 49 (2014): 34–36, accessed January 13, 2020, http://womenandmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Options-No-49.pdf; and Sheila Meintjes, ‘The Aftermath: Women in Post-War Reconstruction’, Agenda 16, no. 43 (2000): 4–10, doi:10.1080/10130950.2000.9675805.
15. Louise Vasvári and I-Chun Wang, ‘Introduction to Life Writing and the Trauma of War’, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 17, no. 3 (2015): 2, doi:10.7771/1481-4374.2915.
16. Tess Coslett, Celia Lury and Penny Summerfield, ed., Feminism and Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods (London and New York: Routledge, 2002): 1.
17. I have previously made a case for the unprecedented popularity of life narratives in post-war Sri Lanka by illustrating the enthusiasm with which two biographical narratives of war were received. The Sinhala translation of the memoir of the former head of the LTTE Women’s Political Wing, Thamilini Jeyakumaran, had gone through a fifth reprint within the first three months of its publication, and Road to Nandikadal, penned by Major General Kamal Gunaratne, the commander of the 53 Division of the Sri Lankan Army, went out of stock within a few days of its release in 2016: see Thilini N.K. Meegaswatta, ‘Unframing Truths: The Representation of Gender in Sri Lanka’s Post-War Literature in English’ (unpublished Master’s thesis, University of Colombo, 2017).
18. Ajith Boyagoda and Sunila Galappatti, A Long Watch (Noida, India: Harper Collins, 2016).
19. Rohini Mohan, The Seasons of Trouble (Noida, India: Harper Collins, 2014).
20. Pavan Malreddy and Anindya Purakayastha, ‘Cultures of Violence and (A)Himsaic Historiography: The Indian Subcontinent, a Million Mutinies Again?’, Kairos: A Journal of Critical Symposium 2, no. 1 (2017): 3–14.
21. Ben Campbell et al., ‘Introduction to the BASAS 2019 Special Section’, Contemporary South Asia 28, no. 3 (2020): 359–61, https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2020.1803214.
22. Joshua Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
23. Rajani Thiranagama, ‘No More Tears Sister: The Experiences of Women (War of October 1987)’, in The Broken Palmyrah: The Tamil Crisis in Sri Lanka—An Inside Account, ed. Rajan Hoole et al. (Colombo: Sri Lanka Studies Institution, 1990), 305–325; Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, ‘Ambivalent Empowerment: Women in Displacement, War and Peace’, South Asian Refugee Watch 2, no. 2 (2000), accessed April 15, 2019, http://calternatives.org/resource/pdf/Ambivalent%20Empowerment%20-%20Women%20in%20Displacement,%20War%20and%20Peace.pdf; and Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders & Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007 [1988]).
24. Raewyn Connell, ‘Arms and the Man: Using the New Research on Masculinity to Understand Violence and Promote Peace in the Contemporary World’, in Male Roles, Masculinities and Violence: A Culture of Peace Perspective, ed. Ingeborg Breines, Raewyn Connell and Ingrid Eide (New York: UNESCO, 2000): 21–34.
25. Mohan, The Seasons of Trouble, 19.
26. Ibid., 251.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., 334.
29. Ibid., 204.
30. Ibid., 8.
31. Ibid., 55.
32. Ibid., 3, 12.
33. Ibid., 4.
34. Ibid., 44.
35. Ibid., 45.
36. Ibid., 184.
37. Carpenter, ‘Recognizing Gender-Based Violence’, 94.
38. Jones, ‘Gendercide and Genocide’; Hannah Wright, ‘Masculinities, Conflict and Peace Building: Perspectives on Men through a Gender Lens’, Saferworld (2014), accessed March 22, 2022, https://www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/publications/862-masculinities-conflict-and-peacebuilding-perspectives-on-men-through-a-gender-lens.
39. Mohan, The Seasons of Trouble, 200.
40. Ibid., 274.
41. Ibid., 53.
42. Ibid., 183.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid., 340.
45. Lara Stemple, ‘Male Rape and Human Rights’, Hastings Law Journal 60 (2009): 605–47, accessed March 17, 2019, https://scienceblogs.de/…/i-e76e350f9e3d50b6ce07403e0a3d35fe-Stemple_60-HLJ-605.pdf.
46. Judith Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’, Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 519–31, accessed January 8, 2019, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3207893.
47. Hilmi Zawati, ‘Impunity or Immunity: Wartime Male Rape and Sexual Torture as a Crime against Humanity’, in Torture 17, no. 1 (2007): 27–47; 34, accessed March 13, 2019, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17456904/.
48. Lentin, as quoted in Carpenter, ‘Recognizing Gender-Based Violence’, 94; Bettina Engels, ‘Rape and Constructions of Masculinity and Femininity’, Politikon 8 (2004): 56–71, accessed March 16, 2019, https://www.iapss.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/politikon_8.pdf; and Chris Dolan, Social Torture: The Case of Northern Uganda 1986–2006 (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009).
49. Dubravka Zarkov, ‘The Body of the Other Man: Sexual Violence and the Construction of Masculinity, Sexuality and Ethnicity in Croatian Media’, in Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence, ed. Caroline Moser and Fiona Clark (London: Zed Books, 2001): 69–82; and Chris Dolan, War Is Not Yet Over: Community Perceptions of Sexual Violence and Its Underpinnings in Eastern DRC (London: International Alert, 2010).
50. Don Couturier, ‘The Rape of Men: Eschewing Myths of Sexual Violence in War’, On Politics 6, no. 2 (2012): 10, accessed February 21, 2019, https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/onpolitics/article/view/12770/5965.
51. Stemple, ‘Male Rape and Human Rights’, 605–47; Human Rights Watch, ‘“We Will Teach You a Lesson”: Sexual Violence against Tamils by Sri Lankan Security Forces’ (2013), accessed March 17, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/02/26/we-will-teach-you-lesson/sexual-violence-against-tamils-sri-lankan-security-forces; and United Nations. ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment on His Mission to Sri Lanka’ (2017), accessed March 19, 2019, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G16/440/12/PDF/G1644012.pdf?OpenElementhttps://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/TJ_Guidance_Note_March_2010FINAL.pdf.
52. Human Rights Watch, ‘“We Will Teach You a Lesson”’, para. 4.
53. Dubravka Zarkov, The Body of War: Media, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Break-Up of Yugoslavia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007): 66.
54. Ibid., 166.
55. Ibid., 165.
56. Stuart Hall, Jessica Evans and Sean Nixon, ed., Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices (London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), 29.
57. Zarkov, The Body of War.
58. Sarvam Kailasapathy, ‘Women’s Activism in Jaffna, Sri Lanka: Defiant Mother Politics’, in Women Transforming Peace Activism in a Fierce New World: South and Southeast Asia, ed. Kumudini Samuel (Quezon City, Philippines: Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, 2012): 98–113; Maanavi, ‘“Keeping Memories Alive in the Face of Impunity”: Women’s Activism in Eastern Sri Lanka’, in Women Transforming Peace Activism, ed. Samuel, 132–46; and Sherine Xavier, ‘Women Are Not Powerless All the Time’, in Women Transforming Peace Activism, ed. Samuel, 114–31.
59. Boyagoda and Galappatti, A Long Watch, 108.
60. Ibid., 86.
61. Ibid., 216.
62. Liz Stanley, ‘Moments of Writing: Is There a Feminist Auto/Biography?’, Gender & History 2, no. 1 (1990): 58–67, doi:10.1111/j.1468-0424.1990.tb00079.x; Leigh Gilmore, Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women’s Self-Representation (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1994); Helmi Järviluoma, Pirkko Moisala and Anni Vilkko, Gender and Qualitative Methods (London: Sage, 2003); and Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010).
63. Boyagoda and Galappatti, A Long Watch, 197.
64. Ibid., 201–02.
65. Paul Kirby and Masha Henry, ‘Rethinking Masculinity and Practices of Violence in Conflict Settings’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 14, no. 4 (2012): 447, doi:10.1080/14616742.2012.726091.
66. Kirby and Henry, ‘Rethinking Masculinity’, 447.
67. Couturier, ‘The Rape of Men’, 3.
68. Andi Schubert, ‘Warriors and Fathers: War, Visual Culture and the Complexities of Constructing Masculinities after the End of Sri Lanka’s Civil War’, NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies 11, no. 3 (2016): 139–57, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2016.1217691.
69. Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009): 1.
70. Ibid., 11.