| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article explores the ways in which people who have perpetrated violence reformulate their lives and recreate sociality in the aftermath, through a focus on the narratives of former insurgents in Sri Lanka. It is anchored in a period of violence known as 'the Terror' (Bheeshanaya), which convulsed the southern and central regions of the country in the late 1980s. Attention is paid to how former insurgents go about recreating their social worlds in a post-terror context where 'perpetrators', 'victims', and 'witnesses' must live side-by-side in the absence of justice or reconciliation. This article suggests that for many 'perpetrators' of violence, rebuilding life in the aftermath is grounded in the mundane. The everyday that former insurgents must continually negotiate is saturated with the ethical charge of their past violence, which shapes sociality in the present in convoluted ways. Past violence and its complex moral evaluations linger beneath the everyday and surface unexpectedly under the most banal circumstances. Former insurgents reflexively put in place carefully thought-out strategies to re-create sociality and proactively attempt to manage the obstacles that their violent pasts may throw in the way of their ongoing attempts to reclaim their social worlds after terror.
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