Lakshman Kadirgamar and Lankans' collective memory lapse
 

BY HARINDA Ranura Vidanage

"THUS evil is a much more complex category than it may appear. It is not a simple eccentric obscenity to compare Angelis Silesius' famous mystical statement. 'The rose is without a 'why' with Primo Levi's experience in Auschwitz.

When Levi thirsty, tried to reach for a piece of snow on the window sill of his barracks, the guard outside yelled at him to move back: in reply to Levi's perplexed 'Why, why the refusal of such an act, which broke no rules - the guard replied: 'There is no 'why' here in Auschwitz.'

Perhaps the coincidence of these two 'whys' is the ultimate infinite judgment of the twentieth century: the groundless fact of a rose enjoying its own existence meets its 'oppositional determination' in the groundless prohibition springing from the pure jouissance of the guard - just for the sake of it."

- Slavoj Zizek

As days pass by the gallant face of Lakshman Kadirgamar faces a natural decay as the posters stuck in every corner of Colombo start to fade in the scorching heat.

There is a significant debate among many of the condition of collective memory loss in the country.

Is it a natural outcome of the hyper realistic condition of the capitalist sphere or is it an inherent characteristic of the Sri Lankan polity bathed in blood blurring the value of life.

Irrespective of the cause of the acute memory loss the undisputed truth is the existence of this loss at all levels. Death has become an alternative space of existence in the country as the soaring number of deaths has made it break the limit of conscious comprehension thus making it a fact that needs not be comprehended.

This is where the paralysis of national conscience lies. Once the death has taken place it has taken place and that's it; this has become the shameful but the real truth of our time.

Every time a human being is lost the impact of the loss is elevated to unprecedented levels especially through the simulation machinery of the media. But the levels of containment of the impact are so low as they are just blown away in days as breaking up of as gigantic water bubble.

The utmost fear of the writer is will this prophet unarmed face a similar fate in his post life. As editorials, op-eds and features flow in newspapers and visuals dominate TV screens of Lakshman Kadirgamar, the fear is when these simulation machines drop off these symbolic gestures drop at their own will.

This has become the fate of the new heroes of our time. The ancient ones are lucky as they were not subjected to fetishes of media or any other simulationary cloaking.

They transcend the corrosion of time. In contrast the new heroes' men/women with equal qualities are brought to life in the simulationary environments and made virtual post humans but the same mechanisms take their life so violently away erasing all memories that would have remained with the values and essence of their legacies.

Lakshman Kadirgamar faces a paradox even in his death. He was never a figure democratically elected by the people nor was he a person who mingled among the people though people who associated with him knew what a great human being he was.

The whole image of this great man was made and preserved mostly on the virtual spaces of media. Thus in his death the role of this powerful sphere decides the preservation of his place in history among other great sons of the nation.

The argument emerging from this is that in a polity where memory loss is acute and the virtual termination of legacies on media spheres, a gargantuan effort must be made to protect and cultivate the legacy of this extraordinary human who defied his born identity for the greater good of all Sri Lankans.

A vociferous element in the Lankan context especially in the issue of peace and conflict management is the so called "civil society", but this assassination never took place for these great apostles of peace.

No peace nick in the Sri Lankan civil society came out with a condemnation of either the murder or made a serious appeal to the international community.

The condemnations later which came out were too lame and written with a guilty conscience. In textual deconstruction they reveal the uneasiness of the psyche of the civil society protagonists.

Peace was the ultimate objective Kadirgamar lived for. He personally believed it would ensure his liberty from the life he led like a prisoner in his own dimension. With security personnel running around him with guns poised to shoot any element of hostility, the only escape for Kadir was perpetual peace.

As in the Kantian sense of the term, he would have been a person who would have done anything for the cost of liberty, to achieve it under any circumstance.

This difficult life, still portrayed by the loyalty to the motherland and the diplomatic wisdom of the man, should have not been treated in dead silence.

The genuine peace nicks, the peace mongers and the peace sojourners should have come out and demonstrated at least they were genuine in terms of peace.

This void has created an association of Minister Kadirgamar with the extreme nationalists of the polity.

They thrive on his assassination and have made him in his death a virtual ally of their camp. Lakshman Kadirgamar was a true son of the nation but not an apostle of anti Tamil nationalism or hardcore Sinhalese convert.

He was the living essence of what is to be Sri Lankan.

This is an appeal to the nation to transcend the virtual shut down of memory or the rewriting of limited memory in the total conscience. If everything is to be forgotten or to be handed over to hyper real entities of media or techno spheres the political victory of Sri Lanka will never be achieved.

It will succumb to the internal bleeding that is cloaked through chains of simulation.