Deeper Hegemony: The Populist Politics of Sinhala Nationalist Discontent and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna in Sri Lanka
956 Views295 Pages
1 File ▾
This thesis contends that nationalism must be understood in relation to the emergence of a series of power defined as discipline, governmentality, and biopolitics. It is argued that these macrophysical and microphysical tendrils of modern power targeted as they are on bodies, populations and the „life process‟ itself in an ever more pervasive manner are reproductive of discursive representations of the „social‟ and populations which can and do operate towards hierarchies of inclusion, exclusion and marginalization in terms of privileging access to citizenship, political participation and socio-economic resources. Focusing on the colonial and postcolonial sphere and specifically the development of Sinhala nationalism in Sri Lanka, this thesis argues that the colonial encounter produced a racialised and ethnicised social mapping of Sri Lanka, which interlocking with an ontological order that already demonstrated a nexus between political power and Sinhala Buddhist identity, has resulted in the fusing of disciplinary, governmental and biopolitical modes of power with the reproduction of a potent hierarchical Sinhala majoritarianism which has subordinated Sri Lanka‟s Muslim and Tamil communities. Furthermore, the thesis contends that whilst colonial power initiated these transmutations in community and identity, Sinhala nationalist movements have also furthered the logic of disciplinary, governmental and biopolitical power resulting in the hegemonisation of nationalist discourses in the postcolonial period. The thesis focuses on the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna as a case study in Sinhala nationalist mobilisation, arguing that the degree to which this radical subaltern movement is informed by and reproduces Sinhala nationalist discourses and practices demonstrates the extent to which nationalist discursive representations of the territory, political community and identity of Sri Lanka as fundamentally Sinhala Buddhist have become hegemonic and socially diffuse.
No comments:
Post a Comment