Rewriting War, Replacing Memory: Identity and Narrative in Sri Lankan Civil Literature.

Authors

  • Anna Thomas

Keywords:

Replaced memory, Sri Lankan civil war, memorialisation

Abstract

According to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, colonisers replaced memory by removing people’s traditional memory and substituting it with their own. Thus, the core memory of the natives was replaced by that of their colonisers. By erasing monuments and changing names of people and places, the colonisers ‘replaced’ memory of the colonised. On the psychological front, replaced memory can be defined as a branch of memory formed when individual memories intersect with collective memories during conflict. This phenomenon of replaced memory proves relevant in the case of human-initiated disasters such as wars. This paper will discuss the concept of replaced memory along with the construction of identity in the selected narratives of the Sri Lankan civil war, especially through the three types of memory- haptic, iconic and olfactory, and placing them against the socio-political and
economic aspects of memory. The texts chosen for the study are: The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam and Tamil Tigress by Niromi de Soyza.

Author Biography

Anna Thomas

Anna Thomas is currently pursuing her post graduate degree in English and Comparative Literature from the Central University of Kerala. She completed her B. A from All Saints’ College Thiruvananthapuram. She also worked as an intern at Samyukta Research Foundation. Her interest lies in the area of memory studies, eco-criticism, and children's literature. In her free time, she likes to immerse herself in the world of fiction.

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Published

2025-01-30

How to Cite

Anna Thomas. “ Replacing Memory: Identity and Narrative in Sri Lankan Civil Literature”. Samyukta: A Journal of Gender and Culture, vol. 9, no. 2, Jan. 2025, https://samyuktajournal.in/journal/index.php/sgc/article/view/225.

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Articles