Description:
Through the testimonies of war, defeat, and survival from veterans of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) now exiled in France, Giacomo Mantovan sheds light on the production of self and subjectivity within a revolutionary and authoritarian organisation, and contributes to debates on compliance, resistance, and political agency under authoritarian regimes.
Brief description:
Giacomo Mantovan holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and is a researcher at the Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA), ISCTE-IUL, in Lisbon. He has been a visiting fellow at Stanford University and the University of Edinburgh, and a research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies. His research focuses on political violence, militancy, and the experience and memory of civil war and exile among Sri Lankan Tamils, particularly former LTTE fighters. Dr Mantovan has published extensively on the narration of the self and the production of political subjectivities during war and migration, as well as on the social consequences of defeat and the commemoration of martyrs.
Review Quotes:
"This is a major contribution to the study of contemporary armed conflicts. By contrast with many previous studies on the topic, it does not narrate this war story at a distance but at close-range, through gripping narratives of former fighters. This exceptional, often poignant first-hand material not only illuminates the story of the armed struggle for an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka, but more ambitiously fuels a theoretically sophisticated discussion of one of the major armed conflicts of our times." - Dr. Laurent Gayer, Center for International Studies, Paris