The names of the leader: the political deification of prabhakaran

This essay investigates the deification of Prabhakaran, the leader of the Sri Lankan Tamil insurrectionary group, the LTTE. I describe the centrality of death in the ideological economy of the LTTE, with the leader Prabhakaran as the love-object who consecrated and directed such death. Following Ern...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Thiranagama, Sharika (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Routledge 2022
In: Religion
Year: 2022, Volume: 52, Issue: 4, Pages: 513-531
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Prabhakaran, Velupillai 1954-2009 / Sri Lanka / Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam / Apotheosis / Politician / History 1970-2022
RelBib Classification:AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
AG Religious life; material religion
BK Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism
KBM Asia
TK Recent history
ZC Politics in general
Further subjects:B Deification
B Militancy
B Sri Lanka
B Death
B War
B Sacred
B Martyrdom
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary:This essay investigates the deification of Prabhakaran, the leader of the Sri Lankan Tamil insurrectionary group, the LTTE. I describe the centrality of death in the ideological economy of the LTTE, with the leader Prabhakaran as the love-object who consecrated and directed such death. Following Ernesto Laclau, I propose that a chain of equivalences is forged in LTTE ideology: to get to Tamil Eelam is to love Prabhakaran. While Tamil militancy’s common solution to the Tamil community’s malaise and suffering under state discrimination and violence was a self-described Tamil homeland, a ‘Tamil Eelam’, the LTTE came to actively create a set of equivalences that centered Prabhakaran as the name of the fullness of that community. This chain of meanings created a path dependency between Tamil Eelam and Prabhakaran, the former actualizable only through the latter. Thus, contemporary Tamil nationalism still labors under the Prabhakaran problem, even after his killing.
ISSN:1096-1151
Contains:Enthalten in: Religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/0048721X.2022.2094785