(In)visible Bodies: Re-Theorizing the Consumption of Bodies Through Divine Possession in Post-War Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper examines the ritual of divine possession in post-war Sri Lanka, specifically looking to how the act of divine possession involves a powerful articulation of women’s bodily agency. Drawing from historical sources such as colonial era journals, legislation, chronicles, political speeches, and news coverage, as well as my own field work, I trace how women’s bodies are often depicted as sites of the nation and are forcefully consumed, through constructions of gendered norms, forms of labor, and legislation for the continuance of that nation. I posit that divine possession engages in a (re)consumption of women’s bodies that works to counter the violence of the nation/state by making community trauma legible on the body itself.