Poetic Deconstructions of Armed Conflict:

Women Voices 136-152 from Sri Lanka

Abstract

In this article I begin by addressing stereotypes associated with the bodies of women in traditional south Asian societies. My focus is Sri Lanka and chronologically the civil war therein. While traditional societies such as the Sri Lankan have defied the reproductive body of the woman, extolling it in religion and celebrating its sensuousness in poetry, these strictures changed drastically with the formation of the Illavar – the women’s brigade of the LTTE. The need of the hour was to enlist women fighter's for the cause of the imaginary homeland of Tamil Eelam. This move had to be successful not just through the arduous physical training undertaken by young women training to be cadres but sociologically there had to be acceptable for women forfeiting their roles as sacrificing wives and mothers. This societal acceptance is accomplished through discourse as facilitated by the LTTE wherein reverence otherwise bestowed on women in their self-sacrificial role is transferred to function duty as suicide bombers for the cause of the motherland in the ofng thereby the violence of the act is extolled as the ultimate sacrifice of martyrdom performed for the greater communal good. I compare this with the act of poetry-writing by women showing this an exercise of female autonomy and resistance.