In the immediate aftermath of the independence, Sri Lanka experienced the emergence of a considerable number of youth militant groups. Amongst them, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) maintained a “de facto” state authority in two provinces since 1990s to 2009, when it was militarily defeated by the government of Sri Lanka. Women’s participation in the LTTE since 1990s challenged the male hegemony of the postcolonial Sinhala Buddhist state, leading to their criminalization through gendered stereotypes such as “bad mothers,” “prostitutes” and “deviant women” lacking moral conscience. The state disregarded the agency embedded in women’s deathly acts of resistance for citizenship. Despite the male dominance in the two competing state-building attempts and the projection of the politically active women through cultural stereotypes, women in the LTTE continuously asserted their political subjectivity, particularly in the post-war context against a repressive state. Based on 42 qualitative interviews from Jaffna, Kilinochchi, and Mannar along with archival research, this paper examines the genealogical evolution of the state’s construction of terrorist “subject” and women’s epistemic resistance against labeling. This paper contends that listening to the voices of subaltern women is essential to understanding their lived experiences under state violence and militarization.
ÅhällL (2015) Monstrous abjects. In: Sexing War/Policing Gender: Motherhood, myth and women’s political violence. Routledge, pp. 107–135.
2.
BloomM (2011) The future bombers. In: Bombshell. University of Pennsylvania Press (Women and Terrorism), pp. 140–172.
3.
Breen-SmythM (2014) Theorising the “suspect community”: Counterterrorism, security practices and the public imagination. Critical Studies on Terrorism7(2): 223–240.
4.
ButhpitiyaV (2023) How to capture birds of freedom: picturing Tamil women at war. Trans Asia Photography13(1). doi: 10.1215/21582025-10365016
5.
ButlerJ (1988) Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal40(4): 519–531.
6.
ButlerJ (2011) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. Routledge.
Dinamiṇa (1999a) Awakening the nation from a sudu neḷuma. Dinamiṇa, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited (Lake House), p. 4.
9.
Dinamiṇa (1999b) LTTE girls (koṭi kellō) deployed as spies infiltrate into Colombo disguised as prostitutes. Dinamiṇa, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited (Lake House), pp. 1–8.
10.
Dinamiṇa (2004) The human bomb that attempted to kill Devananda blasted at the Colpetty Police Station. Dinamiṇa, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited (Lake House), pp. 1–10.
11.
Dinamiṇa (2009a) Breastfeeding Mothers called into the battlefront. Dinamiṇa, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited (Lake House), p. 14.
12.
Dinamiṇa (2009b) Breastfeeding Mothers have been called into the fight: Dolls in Tiger Bunkers. Dinamiṇa, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited (Lake House), p. 16.
13.
Dinamiṇa (2017) This is how you identify a claymore or a woman suicide bomber. Dinamiṇa, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited (Lake House), p. 18.
14.
DotyRL (1993) Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-Positivist Analysis of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines, vol. 37. Oxford University Press, pp.297–320.
15.
GandhiL (1998) ‘Postcolonialism and Feminism’, in Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. Edinburgh University Press, pp.81–101.
16.
GasztoldA (2020) Feminist Perspectives on Terrorism: Critical Approaches to Security Studies. Springer Nature.
17.
GentryCESjobergL (2015a) Introduction: A woman did that? In: Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Thinking About Women’s Violence in Global Politics. Zed Books Ltd, pp. 1–26.
18.
GentryCESjobergL (2015b) Saving, supporting and supplicating: The mother narrative. In: Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Thinking About Women’s Violence in Global Politics. Zed Books Ltd, pp. 70–92.
19.
GentryCESjobergL (2015c) Seeing gender in theories of people’s political violence. In: Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Thinking About Women’s Violence in Global Politics. Zed Books Ltd, pp. 27–48.
20.
GiriK (2023) Strategic silences and epistemic resistance: Agency of women ex-combatants in ‘post-war’ space. In: BanwelSBlackLCecilDK, et al (eds) The Emerald International Handbook of Feminist Perspectives on Women’s Acts of Violence. Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 249–263.
21.
HardingS (ed.) (2004) Introduction: Standpoint theory as a site of political, philosophical, and scientific debate. In: The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader Intellectual and Political Controversies. Routledge, pp.1–15.
Harel-ShalevADaphna-TekoahS (2015) Gendering conflict analysis: Analysing Israeli female combatants’ experiences. In: ShekhawatS (ed.) Female Combatants in Conflict and Peace: Challenging Gender in Violence and Post-Conflict Reintegration. First Palgrave Macmillan, pp.69–83.
24.
JacksonR (2005) ‘Writing Threat and Danger’, in Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics and Counter-Terrorism. Manchester University Press, pp.92–120.
25.
JacksonR (2012a) The Ashgate research companion to political violence. In: Breen-SmythM (ed.) Critical Accounts of Terrorism. Routledge, pp.47–62.
26.
JacksonR (2012b) Unknown knowns: The subjugated knowledge of terrorism studies. Routledge5(1): 11–29.
27.
KarmakarG (2022) Women and war: (Dis)illusionment and disclosure in Niromi de Soyza’s Tamil tigress. Journal of International Women’s Studies24(6): 1–12.
28.
KhanRM, et al. (2024) A decolonial mission for critical terrorism studies: Interrogating the gendered coloniality and colonial function of the dominant discourse on terrorism. In: FindenAE (ed.) Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies. Routledge, pp. 44–63.
29.
LeeCT (2009) Suicide bombing as acts of deathly citizenship? A critical double-layered inquiry. Routledge2(2): 147–163.
30.
LugonesM (2010) Toward a decolonial feminism. Hyptia25: 742–759.
31.
MeegaswatteTNK (2019) Violence as a site of women’s agency in war: The representation of female militants in Sri Lanka’s post-war literature. Bridgewater State University20(3): 2.
MignoloWDWalshCE (2018) On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Duke University Press.
34.
NaplesNA (2003) Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis and Activist Research. Routledge.
35.
ParasharS (2018) The postcolonial/emotional state: Mother India’s response to her deviant Maoist children. In: ParasharSTicknerJATrueJ (eds) Revisiting Gendered States: Feminist Imaginings of the State in International Relations. Oxford University Press, pp.157–173.
36.
PetersonVS (1992) Security and sovereign states: What is at state in taking feminism seriously? In: PetersonVS (ed.) Gendered States: Feminist (Re) Visions of International Relations Thoery. Lynne Rienner Publishers, pp.31–64.
SilvaN (2009) “Gendering” terror: Representations of the female “Freedom Fighter” in contemporary Sri Lankan literature | cultural production. In: MortonSBoehmerE (eds) Terror and the Postcolonial. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, pp.329–344.
42.
SjobergLGentryCE (2008) Reduced to bad sex: Narratives of violent women from the Bible to the war on terror. Sage Publications22(1): 5–23.
43.
SjobergLGentryCE (eds) (2011) The gendering of women’s terrorism. In: Women, Gender, and Terrorism. University of Georgia Press, pp. 57–80.
44.
ThirdA (2014) Constructing the Terrorist: The Threat From Within. Gender and the Political: Deconstruction the Female Terrorist. Palgrave MacMillan.
45.
van DijkTA (1988) News Analysis: Case Studies of International and National News in the Press. Lawerence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
46.
WhitakerEMAtkinsonP (2021) Varieties of Reflexivity. Palgrave Macmillan.
47.
WickramasingheM (ed.) (2010) Methodology matters. In: Feminist Research Methodology : Making Meanings of Meaning-Making, 1st edn. Taylor and Francis Group, pp.13–49.
WodakR (2012) ‘What CDA is About – A Summary of Its History, Important Concepts and Its Developments’, in Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. Sage Publications.
YoungI (2003) The logic of masculinist protection: Reflections on the current security state. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society29(1): 1–25.
52.
ZulaikaJ (2016) The real and the bluff: On the ontology of terrorism. In: JacksonR (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Critical Terrorism Studies. Routledge, pp. 39–48.
