Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence

by E. Valentine Daniel

How does an ethnographer write about violence? How can he make sense of violent acts, for himself and for his readers, without compromising its sheer excess and its meaning-defying core? How can he remain a scholarly observer when the country of his birth is engulfed by terror? These are some of the questions that engage Valentine Daniel in this exploration of life and death in contemporary Sri Lanka. In 1983 Daniel "walked into the ashes and mortal residue" of the violence that had occurred in his homeland. His planned project--the study of women's folk songs as ethnohistory--was immediately displaced by the responsibility that he felt had been given to him, by surviving family members and friends of victims, to recount beyond Sri Lanka what he had seen and heard there. Trained to do fieldwork by staying in one place and educated to look for coherence and meaning in human behavior, what does an anthropologist do when he is forced by circumstances to keep moving, searching for reasons he never finds? How does he write an ethnography (or an anthropography, to use the author's term) without transforming it into a pornography of violence? In avoiding fattening the anthropography into prurience, how does he avoid flattening it with theory? The ways in which Daniel grapples with these questions, and their answers, instill this groundbreaking book with a rare sense of passion, purpose, and intellect.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Ethnography

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Abdulla · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I did feel there were parts, especially in the chapter on representing violence, in which he tried to apply more post-modern jargon than necessary, his writing in general is well theorized, and above all sincere and empathetic.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

E. Valentine Daniel is an anthropologist of communication who in the 1980s thought he was returning to Sri Lanka to collect the songs of women working on the country's tea estates. Daniel, like the women he proposed to study, is Tamil.

What he found instead was a society riven not just by Sinhala-Tamil tension and violence, but between the Tamils themselves. The established Tamils of the north and east coasts looked down on the Tamils who came from India to work the upland estates. The revolutionary Tamil groups split and fought each other. Even a "peace" under an Indian-Sri Lankan agreement was rancid. Repatriated Tamils found no solace in their home villages and the Indian troops sent as peacemakers committed violence against those who remained.

Daniel is ever the scholar, frequently citing Foucault, Derrida, and Ricouer; Hegel, Gramsci, and Levi-Strauss are part of the cast. But where the book really takes off is when it gives voice to the Tamils who suffer economic exploitation or are victims of crime. Some of those victims wound up in US immigration courts. There should be a special cell in Hell for the immigration judge for heard the case of one Tamil who was detained in the US on his way and forced to apply for asylum in this country despite being on his way to seek it in Canada. His case was based onpersecution by both separatist groups. The judge heard the tale of torture and murder of family members but dismissed the case and said he believed the testimony but denied it because the US Department of State country conditions documentation didn't mention Sri Lanka. He was deported; his family saw him get off the plane but he never made it through Sri Lankan immigration--he was disappeared by his own country. Sic semper justice.

[Mike Mena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charred is a great book for those interested in Peircean semiotics. This is an emotionally powerful book without being overly spectacular (although, any kind of violence is automatically "spectacular" to western readers). The book is definitely for grad-level readers that have some control over Peircean terminology. However, even this is not totally essential.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full of theory and the history behind the civil war in Sri Lanka. Val Daniel does not focus on violence to make his book seem sensationalistic, rather, as an anthropography, outlining the history and theory makes the book more widely applicable than an ethnography would.