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

De Mel, Neloufer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0761936351 ISBN 13: 9780761936350

Publisher: SAGE Publications Pvt. Ltd, 2007

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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." Author: Elisabeth Jean Wood Published On: 2008-02-11

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.

Author: The Book Review

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.

Author: PTI

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.

Author: Imprint

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’.

Author: The News, Karachi

Militarizing Sri Lanka will remain a groundbreaking work on Sri Lankan public memory and cultural politics for some years to come.

Author: eSocial Science

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.

Author: Himal Southasian

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.

Author: The Hindu

About this edition

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Pvt. Ltd
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0761936351
• ISBN 13: 9780761936350
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 330