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...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2022
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| 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
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| IxTheo 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) |
| 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. |
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| ISSN: | 1096-1151 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/0048721X.2022.2094785 |
