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In a society that experiences secessionist conflict, many things are not what they seem. This book adopts a performative perspective to understand the peculiar institutional landscape the ensued around the Tamil separatist conflict in Sri Lanka, both during and after the civil war. It draws on two decades of fieldwork across towns and villages in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, ethnography within Sri Lanka's civil service, and privileged access to Norwegian-facilitated peace process. This yields a compelling analytical narrative that shows how political institutions are enacted and witnessed, rather than cataloguing them in the strictures of the law. This provides a fertile vantage point to address the to-be-or-not-to-be dilemmas that we face when seeking to interpret the legitimacy, legality, and validity of the institutions that separatist movements create in aspiration of sovereign status. And as such, this book provides food for thought for broader conceptual debates concerning armed conflict and insurgency. This title is available Open Access.
List of contents
List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; Frequently Used Sri Lankan Terms; A Typographical Note on Separatism; Introduction; 1. Sovereignty, Performativity and Tamil Nationalism in Sri Lanka; 2. Performing an Insurgent Sovereign Experiment; 3. Reconstituting 'Pure Tamil Space' after Sovereign Erasure; 4. The Bureaucratic Evolution of Devolution; 5. Tamil Nationalist Anti-politics in the Wake of Defeat; 6. Conclusion; Epilogue; References; Index.
About the author
Bart Klem is an Associate Professor in Peace and Development studies at Gothenburg University (Sweden). He writes about everyday life and politics amidst armed conflict. He has conducted fieldwork across Sri Lanka's northeast since 2000. He co-authored Checkpoint, Temple, Church and Mosque (Pluto 2015) and co-edited journal issues on insurgent politics (Modern Asian Studies 2018) and on legal identity under insurgencies (Citizenship Studies 2024).
Summary
To-be-or-not-to-be dilemmas abound in the study of separatist insurgencies. Such movements create state-like institutions, which are simultaneously real and unreal. This book offers a performative perspective to confront these interpretative dilemmas. It offers an unprecedented rendition of Sri Lanka's Tamil nationalist movement. Open Access.
Foreword
Challenges state-centric interpretations of insurgent politics by offering a performative perspective on Sri Lanka's Tamil nationalist movement.
