Memory, rhetoric, and identity: A reading of Sri Lanka's postwar conjuncture

In May 2009 the thirty-year war between Sri Lankan state forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was brought to an end through military action. Prolonged war had structured the everyday life ofthose in and from the country and its absence required a reconfiguration oflife 'as people knew it'. Inspired by Stuart Hall's work on conjuncture, I examine the nexus between remembering, narrating and constructing identity, studying how two heads of the Sri Lankan nation-state and a community within the nation-state narrate themselves in this postwar conjuncture. The first two analytical chapters of the thesis explore how the nation-state and its leader are crafted by its postwar Presidents - Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena - across a decade of Independence Day addresses. These Presidents present two articulations of postwar Sri Lanka that are complemented and authenticated by the styles of leadership they personify: Rajapaksa evokes a history of ancient kingdoms presenting himself as king-leader, while Sirisena performs the statesman-leader depicting Sri Lanka as a modern democracy marked by coalition politics. Although Sirisena attempts to shift discourses of threat and security advanced by Rajapaksa, the social forces that fused to form Sirisena's political alliance are unable to hold or intervene rhetorically, and thereby meaningfully alter the postwar conjuncture. The last two analytical chapters explore how Northern Muslims, who were formed into a community through wartime expulsion by the LTTE and have lived in displacement for nearly thirty years, articulate themselves and the communities they remain connected to by contouring expressions oftheir memories, rights, and demands to a postwar context. Although marginalized within policy frameworks, they contest categories that frame them, and recreate classifications to acknowledge expulsion as a specific act of violence. The end ofwar also confronts this community with options of returning to the North and/or remaining in Puttalam, their current region of settlement. Here nostalgia and pre-expulsion relationships with the North become critical resources and memories that contour articulations ofreturn-remain. Revolving around the broad theme ofbelonging, the thesis presents how certain forms ofremembering gain validation while others remain marginalized, and how marginalized memories hold within them the potential to complicate hegemonic narratives. -- En mai 2009, la guerre de trente ans entre les forces de l'État sri-lankais et les Tigres de Libération de l'Eelam Tamoul (LTTE) s'est terminé sur le terrain militaire. La guerre avait structuré la vie quotidienne des Sri Lankais et son absence provoqué une reconfiguration de la vie commune. M'inspirant des travaux de Stuart Hall, j'examine cette conjoncture d'après-guerre à travers les liens entre mémoire, narration et construction de l'identité, en étudiant les récits performatifs de deux chefs d'État et d'une communauté minoritaire dans l'État­ nation. Les deux premiers chapitres empiriques de la thèse explorent comment l'État-nation est façonné par ses présidents - Mahinda Rajapaksa et Maithripala Sirisena - à travers une décennie de discours de la Fête de !'Indépendance. Ils présentent deux articulations du Sri Lanka d'après-guerre, incarnés par leurs styles de leadership respectifs: Rajapaksa évoque une histoire d'anciens royaumes en se présentant lui-même comme dirigeant-roi, tandis que Sirisena interprète le chef-d'État d'une démocratie moderne, marquée par des politiques de coalition. Bien que Sirisena tente d'infléchir les discours sécuritaires avancés par Rajapaksa, les forces sociales qui ont formées l'alliance politique soutenant Sirisena s'avèrent incapables de modifier significativement la rhétorique dominante de la conjoncture d'après-guerre. Les deux derniers chapitres empiriques explorent comment les Musulmans du Nord, qui ont émergés comme communauté à travers leur expulsion collective par les LTTE et vécu comme déplacés internes pendant près de trente ans, articulent leur identité dans le contexte d'après-guerre à travers l'expression de souvenirs et la requête de droits. Bien que marginalisés par les politiques étatiques, ils contestent les classifications officielles afin de reconnaître l'expulsion comme un acte de violence spécifique. La fin de la guerre confronte également cette communauté au choix de retourner au Nord ou de rester dans leur région actuelle. Dans ce contexte, les souvenirs nostalgiques des liens passés avec le Nord deviennent des ressources critiques qui tracent les contours d'une articulation possible entre retourner et rester. Gravitant autour du vaste thème de l'appartenance, la thèse expose comment certaines formes de mémoire sont reconnues tandis que d'autres restent marginalisées et comment des souvenirs marginalisés peuvent potentiellement complexifier les récits hégémoniques

‘Two Homes, Refugees in Both’: Contesting Frameworks – The Case of the Northern Muslims of Sri Lanka

Policies that address post-war displacement often reflect temporal linearity as transitional periods during which they are developed imply a shift from one situation to another. These policies obscure complexities experienced by local communities for whom displacement is ongoing and interminable. This essay applies Sri Lanka’s National Policy on Durable Solutions for Conflict-Affected Displacement (NPDSCAD) to the case of Northern Muslims who were expelled from the Northern Province of Sri Lanka in 1990 and have lived in prolonged displacement for over 25 years. For these Muslims, return-remain is an oscillation and not an either/or option. Using “frames of recognition” to analyze policy documents and data from fieldwork, the paper critically unpacks the category of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) – the displacement-related frame applied to the Northern Muslims – to reveal the multiple subject positions respondents navigate in presenting their own stance to this category. Calling for recognition of the circumstances of their displacement, the respondents’ footing to the IDP frame holds in it both needs-based and justice-based discourses and demands that Northern Muslims be recognized as political subjects. Return-remain is complicated by issues respondents face as they travel between their current home in Puttalam and origins in the North. The paper concludes that while the Northern Muslims are denied full recognition by the NPDSCAD, their complex experiences continue to contest the frames deployed by the policy