Title: Masking terror : how women contain violence in Southern Sri Lanka /
Authors: Argenti-Pillen, Alex.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press,
Year: 2003
Subjects: Women and war Sri Lanka.; Ethnic conflict Sri Lanka; Rural women Sri Lanka Language.; Mothers of soldiers Sri Lanka.; Psychic trauma Sri Lanka.; Sociolinguistics Sri Lanka.
Abstract: "In Sri Lanka, staggering numbers of young men were killed fighting in the armed forces against Tamil separatists. The war became one of attrition - year after year waves of young foot soldiers were sent to almost certain death in a war so bloody that the very names of the most famous battle scenes still fill people with horror. Alex Argent-Pillen describes the social fabric of a rural community that has become a breeding ground and reservoir of soldiers for the Sri Lankan nation-state, arguing that this reservoir has been created on the basis of a culture of poverty and terror.
Contents: Introduction: how women contain violence -- "Have some tea with a piece of Nirvana!": a lifetime under the gaze of the wild -- "Even the wild spirits are afraid!": the gaze of the wild in five neighborhoods -- "We can tell anything to the milk tree": ambiguous forms of speech -- "Those and these things happened": ambiguous forms of speech -- "She said that he had said that ... ": the use of reported speech -- "It wasn't like that when we were young": civil war, National Mental Health NGOs, and the International Community of Trauma Specialists -- The power of ambiguity.