| Summary/Abstract |
Contemporary working-class women’s theaters from within Export Processing Zones in Sri Lanka are rich sites for documenting the development and nature of working-class, feminist and ethnic consciousness. Through a careful analysis of workers’ ‘development dramas’ – theater that contests dominant forms of development – their performative acts on a factory floor, and visual materials, this paper will explore how bodies are produced and made to matter. I will demonstrate how from their inception in the late 1970s onward, these zones were designed to cater to the needs of neoliberal capital and an increasingly ethnicized state at war with separatist Tamil forces. As such, even as the welfare state has been dismantled by neoliberalism, the military and ethnic powers of the state were expanded through these zones. An analysis of workers’ plays allows us to understand the relationship between ethnic war and neoliberalism as they intersect with gender. These plays allow us to explore the conditions of possibility for a working-class feminist consciousness and its limits. To conclude, this paper will consider how these zones have changed after 2009, in the post-war context, with the inclusion of Tamil women workers within.
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