A Postcolonial feminist inquiry of women’s militancy: Hegemonic discourses on terrorism and epistemic resistance in Sri Lanka

Abstract

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.