Masking Terror: How Women Contain Violence in Southern Sri Lanka by Alex Argenti-Pillen; Scarred Minds: The Psychological

Impact of War on Sri Lankan Tamils by Daya Somasunderam; The Ocean of Stories: Children's Imagination, Creativity, and Reconciliation in Eastern Sri Lanka by Patricia Lawrence Review by: Malathi De Alwis Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 104-107 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3655444 . Accessed: 28/03/2014 17:38
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REVIEW ESSAY

Masking Terror: How Women Contain Violence in Southern Sri Lanka. Alex Argenti-

Pillen.Philadelphia: of Pennsylvania 2003.xv + 235pp. Press, University

Scarred Minds: The Psychological Impact of War on Sri Lankan Tamils. Daya Soma-

NewDelhi:Sage,1998.353pp. sunderam.
The Ocean of Stories: Children's Imagination, Creativity, and Reconciliation in East-

ern Sri Lanka.PatriciaLawrence. Centre SriLanka: International for Ethnic Colombo, 2003.94 pp. Studies,
MALATHIDE ALWIS

Senior ResearchFellow Centrefor Ethnic Studies, Colombo International he resilience of individuals and communitiesin the face of extraordinary violence, be it rape,torture,or ethnocide,is a phenomenonthathas continued to perplexas well as give us hope. The threetexts I briefly discuss here seek in differentways to explore the fraughtprocesses of such psychic suffering andhealing. In MaskingTerror,Alex Argenti-PillenarguesthatSinhalawomen in a "rural slum"(an ambiguoustermleft unexplained)in southernSri Lankawho have experiencedextraordinary violence duringa Sinhalayouthuprisingin 1988-90, seek to "reconstructtheir communicative worlds and interruptthe cycle of violence" and "culture-specific" narrative througha varietyof "traditional" styles (p. xii) embeddedin the belief of the wild (yakku). Argenti-Pillenprovides a sensitive analysis of a variety of Sinhala expressions used in everydaydiscoursethatseek througheuphemismsand otherformsof veiled speech to converse about terror and violence in a nonprovocativeway. of domestic vioDrawing a parallelbetween women's responses to perpetrators of nondomestic lence, who continue to live in their households, and perpetrators violence (those who accused,betrayed,threatened, or killed family membersduring the uprising),who continueto live in theircommunities,she also suggests that verbal strategiesof dissociation (differentiatingbetween ordinaryand yaka-like of violence, as it was only the punishpeople) averteda more widespreadoutbreak mentandindictment of theperpetrator thatwas sought,notthatof his entirefamily. These strategies of "acoustic cleansing" (p. 197) are used to substantiate Argenti-Pillen'sbroaderand supposedly anti-Foucauldian position that there are local discourses on violence that reference local social realities ratherthan the
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"institutionalized discoursesof the nationalelite"(pp. 13-14). The conceptualpurchase of such a rigid dichotomizationand the valorizationof the local as "smallscale, well-isolated social contexts"(p. 197) areunclearto me. Previousanthropothat local social realities play a crucial role in logical researchhas demonstrated how nationalevents areplayed out within local communitiesandhow inextricably linked arethe two (for example,PradeepJeganathan, "All the Lord'sMen?Ethnicity andInequalityin the Space of a Riot,"in MichaelRoberts(ed.), Sri Lanka.Collective IdentitiesRevisited,Vol. 2, Colombo: MargaInstitute,1998). Indeed, can even a cursory understanding of nationalismignore the complex articulationof ideological state apparatusessuch as the school, media, and family? What fuels statements(however satirical)such as the one madeby Argenti-Pillen'sinformant that"toend the war we mustreducethe productionof Tamilpeople"(p. 66)? Similarly, could verbaldissociationsoperateas seamlessly within a nonhomogeneous wheretheperpetrator couldbe of a different fromthevictim? neighborhood ethnicity lies in her efforts to providea Argenti-Pillen'smost noteworthycontribution located and contingentreadingof "fearfulness" among Sinhalawomen. While this has enabled her to de-link the Sinhala belief in yakku from its more commonly of ecstaticreligion (the discipline relegatedrole as an exotic culturalmanifestation of anthropologybeing particularly culpablehere), her unquestioningfaith in "tradition"has blinkeredher ability to see how women can be constrainedand disciplinedthrougha system of beliefs andritualsthatseeks to constitutethem as perennially vulnerable to contamination.The containmentof violence seems to be seems to be left producedat a greatcost-to women. Additionally,the perpetrator out of this analyticalequation. Even more surprisingis Argenti-Pillen' s censureof women who refuse to be interpellatedas "fearful"and express their skepticism regardingthe efficacy of NGOs for encouraging cleansing rituals. She not only faults trauma-counseling such "Western" and "modernizing" of paradigms thoughtand behavior,but "estimates"these "fearless"women's contribution to the cycle of violence "to be substantialin the long term"(p. 194). This is a troublingargument,circumscribed by and "fearlessArgenti-Pillen's inability to provide a genealogy of "fearfulness" ness." An engagementwith the extensive literature and vibrantdebateson notions of femininityandmasculinityin Sri Lankawould have madeclearthatnot only are therenormativeand anti-normative discoursesand practicesof genderedembodiment-for example,the interpellatory categoriesof chandiya(thug)or lajja-bhaya (respectability)-that arenot embeddedin a belief in yakku-but thatthe category of the fearless woman is not a new phenomenonarisenout of women's recentresponses to violence, as Argenti-Pillenseeks to suggest and even make predictions basedon such a false assumption. the tiredoppositionsof Westernversusnon-Western, Similarly,why introduce a society thathas been colonized for over modernityversustraditionto understand four centuries?Althoughit is irrefutable thattherehas been a recentboom in mental healthNGOs, psychiatryhas been practicedon the islandfor at least half a century.Its importancein Sri Lankanlife is particularly exemplified throughan incident describedin Scarred Minds:in 1988, a group of 487 Tamils who had been tortured while in Sri Lankanarmycustodytook out a newspaperadvertisement requestingmedicalhelp (p. 264).

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MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY

Scarred Minds, by Daya Somasunderam,is a psychiatric analysis of responses to chronicviolence among Tamil civilians in northernSri Lanka"written from the inside of the violence, as it were"(Veena Das in Foreword,p. 15). Both a not only taughtpsychiatryand witness to and survivorof violence, Somasunderam treatedpatientsthroughout the 20-year civil war in the northbut also cofoundeda human rights documentationgroup that works/ed underthreatof death (another cofounderwas murderedby Tamil militants,in 1989). Somasunderam's comprehensive theoreticaland clinical discussion of the psychological causes and effects of continuousviolence is thusframedby a powerfulcritiqueof violence andan impassionedadvocacy of nonviolence as the most effective way of securingpolitical justice. Workingwith mental illness in conditionsof chronic violence, Somasunderamnotes, makesus questionourown notionsof "normality": It is the "so-called 'normal'individuals[those who incite othersto violence by mobilizingnotions of thanthose who patriotismand nationalism]who may be morein need of treatment come to be labeledas 'insane' " (p. 20). It is unfortunatethat Argenti-Pillen's critique of mental health discourses does not engage Somasunderam'swork. Although Somasunderam would be in with that narrow models medical are agreement Argenti-Pillen inadequateto express the full extent of people's mentalagony, he believes in mobilizingpost-traumatic stressdisorderdiagnosesas "aninternationally recognizedmeansto drawattentionto the plight of civilians and in the long termto createsocial awarenessand mobilise supportfor affectedpopulations" arguesthathis (p. 169). Somasunderam in the language "descriptivenarrativesof psychological reactions... transcribed of the mindandbody"providewhatconventionalaccountsof warfail to do-a testimony to suffering(p. 169). However, Somasunderam'sdeep and politically located commitmentto his community extends beyond merely documenting suffering to trying to explain how a community'svery scarringby violence perpetuates this vicious cycle. Peace can be broughtabout only throughdeveloping an awarenessof the "unconscious psychic forces within us" and changingtheirdirectionby "anact of will" (p. 331). His call for a "descentinto the ordinary" (Veena Das in Foreword,p. 17) and the recreationof a nonviolent sociality is particularlypoignant: "Too much importance has been given to politics.... Let us turnour minds to other things in our lives-work, family, art,drama... let us laugh and cry over life's small problems andgo to sleep withoutany fear"(pp. 311-312). This is the message from the local to the global, observes Veena Das, in a context where a Tamil diaspora sends money for "womenand childrento be recruitedto the Tamil cause in Jaffnawhile theirown childrenarehappilygoing to school"(p. 17). It is childrenand their story telling, in a region thathas witnessed the massacre of entirevillages, where "politicalsilencing had become endemic"(p. 3), that in The Ocean of Stories by PatriciaLawrence.This slim volume are foregrounded is an ethnographic reflectionon the ButterflyPeace Gardenin Batticaloa,in eastern Sri Lanka,which was foundedseven years ago to providea space whereTamil and Muslim childrenwho have endureddevastatingloss and psychic injury can learn to play and heal together.Lawrence,a culturalanthropologistwho did her dissertation researchin this region andhas had a long relationship with the garden, evokes the whimsical as well as transformative skillfully energy power of this exceptional space "where the effects of war made by adults are unmade"with

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gentleness, patience, imaginationand laughter (p. 14). Simultaneouswith such healingis the slow andpainfulnarrowingof a chasmof ethnichatredandsuspicion between Tamil andMuslim childrenandthe similarlyethnically/religiously differwho work with them. entiatedanimators What makes the Butterfly Peace Gardenboth so extraordinary and unique seems to be its constantinterweavingof a varietyof methodologiesand ritualsof healing. Within a framework indebted to Chong philosophy [an underground movement popularin Canadain the 1960s] based on the Taoist maxim-"doing the ordinaryin a marvelous way, doing the marvelous in an ordinaryway" (p. 23)-the garden's founder, Paul Hogan, and his codirector,FatherPaul SatkuTamil folk drama,medicine circles from First Nananayagam,have incorporated tion's peoples in Canada,Buddhistwalking meditation,Jungianpsychoanalysis, etc., to create "a transforming space thatis always in transition... not really anyof this space that is where at all" (p. 30). It is the very culturalnonrecognizability enabling,observesLawrence,because "theusualrules do not applythere... it is a place so free andopen even a grownup mightbe able to relax"(pp. 30-31). This statementis an interestingcounterpoint to Argenti-Pillen'sassertionthat of "traditional," culturallyrecognizable systems healing are the most effective. What I have sought to suggest here is that we should not underestimate the resilience andresolve of woundedindividualsand societies to seek solace in whatever ritualsor systems of healingthey may encounter-be they familiaror unfamiliarandtransform them in the process.

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