| Summary/Abstract |
In 2011, Sri Lanka experienced a wave of ‘grease devil’ attacks—men covered in grease assaulting women. In minority Tamil and Muslim areas, these incidents provoked vigilantism and clashes between locals and the police and the military. This essay examines these incidents through situating them in histories of intense militarisation and current post-war anxieties for ethnic minorities in Sri Lanka. Drawing inspiration from anthropologist James Siegel’s work, it analyses how subterranean forms of violence, currently undertaken by the state, as well as longer histories of political violence unforgotten but publicly disallowed, resurface via proxy figures and a more generalised sense of menace. This history and ongoing militarisation and securitisation produce both ethnically differentiated landscapes, and mark and shape desires in fearful and securitised ways.
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