Abstract
This chapter analyzes the nexus of disability, disablement and masculinity in the context of the twenty-six year Sri Lankan civil war and the disability theatre workshops of the Sunera Foundation in which disabled soldiers of the Sri Lanka army have continued to participate in after the war. It asks what specific characteristics constitute war related impairment and its impact on military men, and draws attention to how disabled soldiers negotiate their impairment in a specific Sri Lankan cultural and political context. It also explores the exceptionality of their participation in the theatre, opening themselves up to gender reversal, homoerotic sensuality and non-indigenous forms of aesthetic expression. By exploring aspects of masculinity and disability in a South Asian context, as well as issues of applied/devised theatre, its promise of transformation, and aesthetic criteria, the chapter brings together a range of conditions, discourses and practices that shape disability, gender, embodiment and performance in Sri Lanka today.
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Notes
- 1.
The war was fought between Sri Lankan government security forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) over the establishment of a separate Tamil state.
- 2.
These include the 1996 Protection of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (No. 28) and the National Policy on Disability (Ministry of Social Welfare of the Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka 2003).
- 3.
The study sought data on gender attitudes, male risk-taking behaviours and male perpetration as well as experiences of violence. The districts were Colombo and Hambantota (urban) and Batticoloa and Nuwara Eliya (rural). Respondents were aged 18–49 years.
- 4.
The return of caste-based arranged marriages in Jaffna after the war (Thiranagama 2014), assaults by Muslim vigilante males on Muslim women for using the internet (Thambiah 2011) and Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim opinion on masculinity as recorded in the masculinities study (de Mel et al. 2013) provide evidence.
- 5.
For example, it campaigned for the issuance of three-wheeler driving licences for disabled veterans so they could engage in sustainable livelihoods (de Mel 2007: 115, 147).
- 6.
These rallies were held on Galle Face Green in the capital, Colombo, and in Kilinochchi, which was the de facto capital of the LTTE during the war.
- 7.
The government provides ex-combatants Rs25,000 as livelihood loans through the Bank of Ceylon but as of July 2014, only 1773 who qualify for such support have accessed the money (Perera 2014).
- 8.
Krishnan (2012: 7) provides the example of The Association of Women with Disabilities (AKASA), an organization based in the North Central Province that does important work with women with disabilities, often in coalition with other women’s groups, but so far has excluded working with disabled female ex-combatants. (On the activities of AKASA, see also Samararatne and Soldatic 2014).
- 9.
Samararatne and Soldatic (2014: vi) found that even when women with disabilities in rural households, for instance, are not considered ‘abnormal’ and are encouraged by their families to cope and contribute to household economies, this integrative approach is challenged by the exclusions they face in the public sphere. Krishnan (2012: 12) observes a similar pattern in his study of disabled female LTTE ex-combatants in Batticoloa. While Batticoloa’s strong matrilocal structures provide a supportive network for these ex-combatants within family environments, their integration in the wider community falls short of expectations even in a context that has generally failed to deliver on combatant reintegration whether male or female (Krishnan 2012: 7). Disability exists, therefore, as an unstable sign, scripted by and through variables of gender, class and ethnicity. While there is an acceptance of the disabled body (even if conditional) within homes, it remains outside of politics and the public sphere.
- 10.
Workshops are held in Badulla, Amaparai, Matara, Mawanella, Panadura, Dehiwela, Kurunegala, Galle and Kandy in the south of the country; in Hatton, and Maskeliya in the plantations; and Jaffna and Batticoloa in the north and east.
- 11.
Aloysius noted that Thusitha Wimalasuriya, the disabled soldier who took the lead role in An Inspired Swan Lake, had told him that ‘he had never been tested like this before’ (interview 2015).
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Acknowledgement
My thanks to Karen Soldatic for many thoughtful comments and critical insights on an earlier version of this essay, and to the participants of the Cultural Studies Colloquium of the University of California at Santa Cruz for their responses to this chapter.
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de Mel, N. (2016). Playing Disability, Performing Gender: Militarised Masculinity and Disability Theatre in the Sri Lankan War and Its Aftermath. In: Grech, S., Soldatic, K. (eds) Disability in the Global South. International Perspectives on Social Policy, Administration, and Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42488-0_7
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