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ABSTRACTS
SESSION II:
EMBODYING THE FEMININE DIVINE
The Suicide Bomber Becomes a Goddess:
Women’s Bodies Sacrificed in Sri Lanka
William Harman, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
 Sri Lankan Tamil suicide bombers have completed
at least 90 suicide bombing operations in the past 20 years. Nearly
72% of these suicide bombings have been committed by women. I argue
here that female suicide bombers have been particularly effective
because of what their bodies represent and because of what their
bodies become in the process of these violent acts. Women in South
Asia have enjoyed an immunity from arbitrary male intrusion and male
searches. Searching women, even suspecting that their bodies bear
weapons of destruction, has been something South Asian male soldiers
(in this case, Sinhalese) are reluctant to consider. Women’s bodies
are traditionally regarded as uninvolved in the violent, often
physically demanding activities of waging war. Men embrace a
warrior’s death; women nurture the living and mourn their dead.
Female bodies are given not for violence and death but for nurture
and nourishment.
But this dynamic is changing radically in Sri
Lanka. In a context where violent pogroms, mass aerial bombings,
complete destruction of villages, and indiscriminate rape and
pillage of the Tamil populous have become strategic tools, women’s
bodies have suffered enormously. Another traditional Tamil notion of
the nature of women’s bodies becomes more appropriate. Their
perceived unjust sufferings are understood in the context of
mythic accounts of two women-become-Tamil-goddesses. These goddesses
are Mariyamman and Pattini, both widespread in Sri Lanka. These are
females who, in a human incarnation, were badly, even horrifically
treated by males. In response, each woman immolated herself and her
male persecutors in an explosive anger, becoming a goddess who makes
herself available to those who call upon her in need. Following
female suicide bombings, shrines are often erected in memory of the
suicide bomber. The shrine embodies her apotheosis.
Maataa Shakti: Embodying Mary as Divine
Feminine in Tamil Nadu
Kristin Bloomer, University of Chicago
 This paper explores the discursive and
performative practices of three women in Tamil Nadu, south India,
who self-identify as Roman Catholic and who claim to be possessed
regularly by Mary. While their embodied practices differ in notable
ways, they also share certain significant qualities. For one, all
three women enact healing rituals on other people’s bodies (Hindu
and Christian) while in this performed state of possession.
Furthermore, they all seem to borrow from various local, Tamil
possession practices—both those generally associated with non-Brahmanical
Hindu communities, and those generally associated with various
denominations of Christianity.
Taking into account these women’s life stories
and socio-cultural surroundings (two of the women live in Chennai;
one lives in a small inland village in Sivaganga District), this
paper asks: To what extent do these women’s bodies, as sites of
performativity and of contestation, borrow and reproduce meanings
and significations from within their own religious tradition? From
other local traditions? It also seeks to analyze particular kinds of
“doubleness,” or multiplicity of subjectivities, that these bodily
engagements enable. To what extent are these women agents in writing
their own scripts? To what extent are they patients? How, if at all,
are they “performing” Maataa? What types of performativities
– of gender, for example, of auspiciousness, of sakti, or of
arul – are going on? Is any one woman mimicking another? Is
anyone mimicking Maataa? What manipulation, what novelty, and
what borrowing is at work here? How, if at all, do these
performances underwrite or undermine the normative (re-)production
of genders and of gendered (and gendering) religious identities?
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