Performing Democracy and Violence, Agonism and Community, Politics and Not Politics in Sri Lanka

The paper examines the construction of the political as a space of contestation in Sri Lanka. Empirically, the article draws on two different field projects, one locating in a Sinhala village in the south of the country in the early 1980s, the other in a Muslim town in the East in the late 2000s. The case studies concentrate on the relationship between religion and politics, and specifically the way in which religion – Buddhism, Islam – is presented as a privileged space for expressions of community, unsullied by the agonistic consequences of the political. The paper at once draws on, and critiques, certain strands of radical democracy theory which have been widely discussed in recent political geography.