Economy, Culture, and Civil War in Sri Lanka

6 Fragments of Memory, Processes of State: Ethnic Violence through the Life Histories of Participants

6 Fragments of Memory, Processes of State: Ethnic Violence through the Life Histories of Participants Francesca Bremner Sri Lanka in July 1983 again? The dust has settled on 1983, and the formations of violence appropriate to a civil war have bypassed that momentous turning point. To go back to 1983 in the light of these subsequent challenges seems doomed to be an intellectually jaded project. The reasons that I do so are twofold. One is that I do not view 1983 only as a moment that gave momentum to the civil war. On the contrary, I attempt to illustrate the way in which the structural and ideological effects of 1983 continue to emerge and shape everyday life. Thus, rather than move away from this moment, I examine the ways in which that conjuncture continues to be implicated in current social formations. The other reason for this study is that my analysis of 1983 is built upon the life histories of a group of men who participated in the acts of violence. Identity is here conceptualized as a social production of state formation. In this study the men who participated, and who are treated as passive templates upon which the state drew its ideological formations, give “voice” to their own violence and their relationship to the state. The “I” that these men bring to the study is valuable in understanding the social constructions of identity,its continuities,ruptures,and limitations from the point of view of the participants in the violence as prior identities shift within the tight press of the unfolding context. The social construction of identity is not presupposed here, but is explored in the grit, blood, and sweat of its etchings as the participants move through the pathways of their everyday lives. People experience the impact of macro structures only within these pathways as they move through the micro politics of its spatial and conceptual realms in which history and context coalesce and sometimes collide. Thus the emphasis of this chapter is on these pathways, in which complex identities already emergent in social life are further transformed and reshaped within new practices that condition new contexts, new conceptual possibilities, and new ways of being. The majority of the people who participated in this ethnic violence were from squatter settlements within Colombo. My study is set in a settlement that residents call Apee Gama, “our” (apee) “village” (gama), although it spans only the upper part of one little street. In 2001, I spent six months collecting life histories from about 25 men who participated in the violence against their middle-class Tamil neighbors. I employ a web of life histories that move through approximately the same space and time to produce a matrix of interactions. This matrix takes this study beyond personal narratives into the heart of the community in which the actors are embedded . Along the way, the life histories are seen to intersect, forming the coordinates of the social matrix as well as the points where the social matrix unravels and separates. The Setting: Apee Gama Apee Gama forms the entryway into the street. It begins with a small grocery store that is also a hangout for the men. A whole world outside Apee Gama comes into view when one stands at this entry point, for it is situated at the con®uence of four streets. It gives a clear line of vision to the Buddhist temple and to the margins of the police compound. Although only about a quarter-mile in length, it contains a public bathroom, little alleyways that open into rows of tenements, and a common tap that bounds the lower end of Apee Gama. Next to the bathroom is a trishaw stand. The trishaws are parked in the order of their arrival, and hires are taken in the order of arrival. After each hire the trishaw returns and takes its place at the end of the line once more. These young men, who are mostly in their twenties , have created a space for themselves at the side of the street where they sit reading newspapers while they wait for the next ride. The washing of the public bathroom rotates daily from family to family and, as in the trishaw stand, there is a strong sense of order and fairness. Apee Gama seems to be characterized by a certain relative equality that is re-®ected in the absence of “strong men.” The inhabitants of Apee Gama pointed out that the only “strongmen” were a...