Literature Surpasses History in Post-conflict Situations: Representing the ‘Unrepresentable’ through the Inter-ethnic Love Relationship in Karen Roberts’ July

Abstract

In the face of military victory in 2009, it is socially significant to ensure that this new phase of post-conflict Sri Lanka regarding the relationship between the Sinhalese and the Tamils should be a lasting one. Part of this process of post-war recovery inevitably involves caring for and supporting the surviving soldiers and innocent civilians who have suffered physically and psychologically. One way to approach this connection between historicising the conflict and supporting traumatised survivors is to reconsider the past through literature that is exclusively based on Sri Lankan ethnic war. In this regard, the study questions whether literature surpasses history in postconflict situations as history reveals facts and figures in a catastrophe whereas literature unfolds psychological trauma of the victims and survivors of an insurgency. Karen Roberts’ July is a Sri Lankan English fiction based on the real incident of antiTamil riots in July 1983 – an organized mob violence of the majority Sinhalese against the entire Tamil race, the so-called minority in Sri Lanka. The novel represents the traumatic experience of the romantic relationship between a Sinhalese girl and a Tamil boy and how their inter-ethnic love relationship is responded by a multi-ethnic society. In this task, it is intended to give some inner consciousness and humanity to the emotional incidents related to the historical record of hostility in anti-Tamil riots in July 1983. In this regard, the term ‘trauma’ is unmistakable which directly connects with the representation of the suffering community in this novel. Trauma is a significant measure of psychological risks in terms of historical as well as modern political catastrophes. Underpinning the weight of the fiction given on the posttraumatic survival of the Sinhalese girl in the face of the murder of her Tamil man committed by her own Sinhalese brother, I argue that literature surpasses history in a post-conflict situation as literature carries more power in addressing the readers in a sensational manner about racism, hostility, torture and trauma whereas history aims to enhance knowledge of the readership regarding the facts related to roots of war, its causes and its crimes against humanity. The study concludes that literature representing the ‘unrepresentable’ trauma can be recognized as crucial in a postconflict society where traumatic memory itself warns the reader not to inspire another trauma-inducing incident in the future.