Cartoon: Reconciliation Process
Click here for larger version. ### This article is part of a larger collection of articles and content commemorating five years after the end of war in Sri Lanka. An introduction to…
End of war | 5 years on
War, Peace and the Manufacturing of Rajapaksa Myths
Photo courtesy the Lankans in general are distressingly indifferent to the plight of the country’s most majestic mammal, the elephant. But an unaccustomed wave of public outrage ensued when a plan to…
OVERCOMING THE POST-WAR MALAISE: WHY SRI LANKA NEEDS A REFORM MINISTRY AND WHAT IT SHOULD DO
[Photo credit: The Empire Youth Annual, 1952] “For centuries the Sinhalese and the Tamils have lived together in peace and amity. We have been governed by their kings and they by ours…
Politics of Quotations: Concluding Rejoinder to Dayan Jayatilleka
Image courtesy RNW In this concluding rejoinder to my friend Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka I shall begin by what appears to me to be the core of our dispute, i.e. Dayan’s highly problematical…
Bringing Politics to the Stage: Observations on Post-War Political Theatre in Sri Lanka
Image courtesy Floating Space production of ‘My Other History‘ During the summer of 2010 I was tasked to assist a foreign post graduate student to conduct her research on Sri Lanka’s post war theatre.…
THE STATE AND WAR: THE POLITICS OF PHILOSOPHY
Photo by REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte, via Channel 4 Concluding rejoinder to Vangeesa Sumanasekara – Slavoj Zizek In the beginning was politics. Marx’s favourite figure in literature was Prometheus. The better known version of…
Understanding the National Question as a Pre-Democratic Problem: A Skeptical Note on the Southern Reform agenda
Photo by AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, via FT.com Five years after the end of the war, the Government has now started arguing that the war is not over. The Government doesn’t think the…
On Christian Essentialism, Structural Correspondences and Philosophical Companionships
Photo by EPA/M.A.PUSHPA KUMARA courtesy LA Times It is quite possible to give detailed responses to all the questions that my learned friend Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka has asked me. Nevertheless, I will only attempt…
Sari
Photo by Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai 2009 When Sidath’s mum wore her wedding sari, she would tell her children, ‘the lotus would fully open.’ The large lotus was noticeable because its bright red sequins,…
Questions, five years on
Image courtesy Tehelka Five years ago the demise of Velupilai Prabhakaran was a fast-spreading secret-on-the-block several days before it was made official and the war was pronounced to have ended. One felt…
Good women and bad women of the post-war nation
Photo by Anushka Wijesinha, 2011, via IPS Since the end of war in May 2009, the United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government has sought to forge a new overarching Sri Lanka identity…
waiting for the war to end
In this place there are No trees no old house With the rope swing Between the karatha kolombang Trees Here there is only White heat white-brown sand Four tin walls And a…
Happy Families
Photo by Arun Pillai-Essex I am having a somewhat surreal conversation with a young man. He is describing a telephone conversation with a woman calling from Australia who, ‘speaks with a Sinhala…
Writing on the Wall: A Sinhala Prayer in a Tamil Church
When I was walking near the Mulativu beach by around 5.30 this morning, I came across an abandoned Catholic Church. It was in a dilapidated condition. The Church seems to have been…
A response to the critiques of the victory celebrations
Photography by AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, via “” – Jacques Derrida: text delivered at Althusser’s funeral “” – Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories, London, Verso, 1990, pp 223-24. The central contention of the anti-victory celebration…