Being Shaken on Fieldwork in Post-Conflict Sri Lanka and Writing on the Pain/Mourning of "I/we"

Knowing Our True Selves through the Feeling and Mourning of Inner Pain

Abstract

We may fear others because in them our inner pain that arises from oppressing ourselves out of a desire to be loved is projected. By attending to and mourning this pain to which we have numbed ourselves, we may realize who we truly are/could be. Jude Ratnam—director of Demons in Paradise (2017), a film that grapples with the pain of the Sri Lankan Civil War—says, "Pain made us cruel. When you release the fear of seeing pain, fear no longer has power over you." Applying the "hospitality" concept to comprehend a researcher's experience realizing his/her own pain upon being shaken by the pain of the people whom s/he engages in the field, what kind of experience can fieldwork be? Moreover, how can the writing of ethnography guide the writer to be her/his true self, a primordial way of being "I/we"? This paper discusses these questions based on the author's experience in post-conflict Sri Lanka.