ABSTRACT
This chapter problematizes the claim about the transformative potential of revolutionary violence for the subaltern and in particular for women located in postcolonial, heteropatriarchal societies. By focusing the analysis on the civil war in Sri Lanka (1983-2009), this chapter makes the point that Tamil women’s politics of resistance through participation in the armed struggle directed by the militarized minority militant group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), especially in its ideology of violence, led to their disempowerment and undermined their agency. As a social institution, the LTTE was structured around an ideological framework and practices that went against the essence of women’s emancipation, i.e. it was rooted in gendered division of labor that subordinated women’s status; authoritarianism that elicited unthinking obedience and loyalty to an essentially masculinist leadership, a hierarchical structure that undercut the very essence of freedom of expression; and promotion of masculinist notions of valor, virility, superiority, and gallantry. This argument needs to be complicated, however, by historicizing colonized women’s politics through an examination of instances of women voluntarily joining suicidal militant missions in situations where annihilating the enemy and choosing the moment and circumstances of one’s death become a source of empowerment and expression of agency.
