Violence, Torture and Memory in Sri Lanka Quotes

“A key finding is that violence is remembered, given meaning and lived with in the present, in ethical terms. As we have seen from the stories belonging to former insurgents and former state counter-insurgency officers, the mediation of violent memories is fundamentally an ethical exercise for those who have participated in violence. It entails a reconstruction of one’s experiences in moral terms, in ways that enable ‘perpetrators’ to continue living with their unsettling pasts in the present. Memories of violence are morally tendentious, rather than being abstract and objective recollections of a recorded past. Shaped by the changing socio-political and moral contexts of recall, memories of violence are continuously reworked in the present, with profound implications for notions of the self and sociality.”
― Dhana Hughes, Violence, Torture and Memory in Sri Lanka: Life after Terror

“Throughout this book we have found the narratives of those who have perpetrated violence to be ambiguous and contradictory, with both a refusal to accept moral responsibility for violence taking place alongside an apparent tacit acknowledgement of it. We have also seen the ways in which memories of violence are mediated in ethical terms by those who have engaged in it. Selective and altered remembering, disassociation and deflection, avoidance, denial and amnesia, which have been shown to mark the testimonies of ‘perpetrators’ of violence in other global contexts from South Africa to Argentina”
― Dhana Hughes, Violence, Torture and Memory in Sri Lanka: Life after Terror

“In post-terror southern Sri Lanka, people kept the memory of the Bheeshanaya alive as an ethical issue and continued to grapple with the unreconciled past through these karmic stories. In the absence of any formal justice, then, Buddhism and its law of karma, as well as giving meaning to their experiences of violence in the past, ensured that ‘perpetrators’ of violence were held to account in the present.”
― Dhana Hughes, Violence, Torture and Memory in Sri Lanka: Life after Terror

“There was something surreal about the unwillingness of people to talk about or openly remember the Bheeshanaya, the tranquillity on the surface of communities that had suffered horrendous violence, and the nonchalant dismissal of this event in ordinary conversations. While silence stifled the open remembering of the Bheeshanaya, it did not necessarily follow that silence equated to a real forgetting of past violence (or forgiveness for that matter). Instead, this silence and apparent amnesia on the surface operated as a means of enabling people from various opposing sides to carry on co-existing.”
― Dhana Hughes, Violence, Torture and Memory in Sri Lanka: Life after Terror

“The portrayal of counter-insurgency officers in moral and heroic terms, a division of the world into ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and a rationalisation of the counter-insurrection characterised their alternative ‘truth’. Through their stories, former counter-insurgency officers engaged in a reworking of the past and a retrospective refashioning of the self, in order to alter their relationship to that past and make it more conducive to life in the present. Their narrative reconstructions allowed them to imbue their morally troubling experiences with meaning, and to find ways of coming to terms with their actions in the aftermath of terror.”
― Dhana Hughes, Violence, Torture and Memory in Sri Lanka: Life after Terror

“All former counter-insurgency officers categorically denied having perpetrated torture during the Terror. In the case of at least one such research participant, anecdotal evidence from mutual contacts suggested otherwise. It is impossible to tell who, if any, of the former counter-insurgency officers featured in this chapter perpetrated torture during the Bheeshanaya. Eliciting confessions is not the aim of this book. My interest lies, instead, in exploring the ways in which ‘perpetrators’ of violence remember and reconstruct their disturbing pasts, and how they come to terms with it in the present.”
― Dhana Hughes, Violence, Torture and Memory in Sri Lanka: Life after Terror

“This book explores how the ethical charge carried by violence seeps into the fabric of life in the aftermath. The key arguments proposed are that for those who have perpetrated violence, the mediation of its memory is ethically tendentious and steeped in the moral, and so carries important implications for notions of the self and the negotiation of sociality in the present. 3 Memory does not entail an abstract recording of the past, but is informed by the socio-political context of recall. This means that people who have engaged in violence remember and give meaning to their experiences in ways that allow them to continue living with themselves, with their violent pasts, and with others, in the aftermath.”
― Dhana Hughes, Violence, Torture and Memory in Sri Lanka: Life after Terror

“At the time of writing, the problem of how to deal with the more recent events of 2009 – the accusations of war crimes, the alleged failure of international agencies – remains unresolved. This book reminds us that this is not the first time that Sri Lanka has had to deal with the scars of its own internal violence, and as it makes abundantly clear, the question of how to ‘deal with’ such a bitter past is never easy and never straightforward. However, it is a question of great importance, and Dhana Hughes is to be thanked for providing her readers with this exemplary account of the ways in which ordinary people struggle every day to deal with their own past and their possible complicity in times of great danger and fear.”
― Dhana Hughes, Violence, Torture and Memory in Sri Lanka: Life after Terror

“The bigger story, which includes both the JVP insurrection and the civil war with the LTTE, also involves a close but unstable link between populist democracy and authoritarian rule. Sri Lanka has had regular, and relatively peaceful, elections throughout the decades of internal turmoil. Sometimes elections have initiated a change of government, but more often incumbent governments have used patronage and political manoeuvring to block off potential opposition. The more adept a government is at blocking expressions of opposition and discontent, the more toxic the long-term consequences for the polity as a whole. The bigger story also involves the steady, and for now apparently irreversible, growth of the military-security establishment as a factor in the country’s internal political arrangements.”
― Dhana Hughes, Violence, Torture and Memory in Sri Lanka: Life after Terror

“Drawing on original ethnographic field research conducted primarily with former guerrilla insurgents in southern, western and central Sri Lanka, this book analyses the memories and narratives of people who have perpetrated political violence. It explores how violence is negotiated and lived with in the aftermath, and its implications for the self and social relationships from the perspectives of those who have inflicted it.”
― Dhana Hughes, Violence, Torture and Memory in Sri Lanka: Life after Terror