Reiteration Available to Purchase

Chapter 4 explores iterative productions of the Sri Lankan nation through the visual culture of the tsunami and the war. Specifically it shows how national politics are continually made and unmade through the production, use, reuse, and distribution of images of the tsunami and the war. While tsunami images and maps were generally uncontested and heralded for their value in representing damage and destruction, maps of the conflict were fraught with different interpretations based on political interests. The chapter follows images’ unruly and unstable qualities in the context of various political modes and motives and amid the difficulties of truth-making in the war by governmental and nongovernmental regimes. In doing so, the chapter shows the ways in which disasters continue to live on through the contestations and politics surrounding images, and how, after May 2009 in Sri Lanka, peace can be the continuation of war by other means.