Relegating Humanity to Bare Body: Negotiating Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage

ABHISEK GHOSAL

Abstract


Humanity has always been a subject of investigation over the time and has already been explored from several points of view. But the sufferings of human beings in a post-war period cannot be understood in terms of conventional theoretical insights and thus need to be made subject to theoretical insights of Post-humanism so as to divulge how and to what extent postwar survivors have to withstand inexorable onslaughts of reality to dwell in the world. Post-war survivors are sometimes forced to compromise with their basic human needs for survival and are reduced to bare bodies. During the period of war, human bodies are intently instrumentalized to retain the tension in war thereby leading victims of war to droop down before the authority. Victims of war have to bear with inhumane torture and torment until the victims fail to receive it. Victims of war are forcefully relegated to venerable position so that they cannot put up strong resistance to atrocious afflictions perpetrated by ruling authority. Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage brilliantly exposes how postwar survivors are reduced to bare bodies by the Government in power and ominous reality in the context of Sri Lankan Civil War. This article seeks to investigate how post-war survivors are politically reduced to mere bare bodies and how these survivors have to negotiate formidable challenges to get past of their poignant survival, taking recourse to insights in Post-humanism.

Keywords


Bare Body; State of Exception; Muselmann; War; Nation-state

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References


Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Italy: Giulio Einaudi editore

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---. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. New Work: Zone Books, 1999. Print.

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Arudpragasam, Anuk. The Story of a Brief Marriage. New Delhi: Fourth Estate, 2016. Print.

Jain, Rashee. Textbook on Human Rights: Law and Practice. 3rd Ed. Haryana: LexisNexis,

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