Heteronormativity and its Private and Public Balancing in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Within the public sphere of South Asian countries, prominent movements to formally recognise gender diversity and decriminalise same-sex relations have had effects in Nepal and India, but same-sex relations remain a criminal offence in Sri Lanka and other South Asian countries. Against this background, the article analyses an early novel by the Sri Lankan Canadian writer Shyam Selvadurai, showing how prohibition and tolerance go rather uneasily hand in hand within the public and private spheres of Sri Lanka, creating anxious precarities in the everyday lives of individuals, their families and supporters within a heteronormative framework. Since formal legal recognition per se can never fully guarantee the freedom to live one’s life as one desires, the article discusses, in light of Selvadurai’s work, to what extent private individual strategies of navigation and self-management remain crucial for non-heteronormative individuals.