On Marxism and Maskism, Marxists and Maskists and unbecoming skins
‘Is
it preordained, is it sacred or tragic that moment when your mask
replaces you forever?’ Some posters have a way of standing out and not
just because of colour or absence of interfering competition. I saw one
today. The line was so powerful that even though it is a free ad for
whoever put it up, I shall talk about it.
It was in Sinhala. Maskvaadaya venuwata marxvaadaya (Marxism instead
of Maskism) was the slogan trying to persuade people to purchase a new
bi-monthly magazine called Aurora. The line is catchy, the play on words
cute and it is a say-all capture. Good stuff. Got me thinking.
The implication is that Marxism is somehow ‘real’ whereas other
doctrines are not what they make themselves out to be, ‘other’ including
other versions of Marxism (since there are more than one), I would
imagine. Good to be assertive in the matter of marketing. Kudos.
Use of masks
I would imagine that those involved in this Aurora believe that
everyone apart from themselves are engaged in a deliberate or else
unwitting process of hoodwinking follower and self both. Well, I am sure
some of these ‘others’ would say the same of others as well, Marxists
and non-Marxists and of course those who wish to re-launch the good ship
Aurora. The fact is that masks are conveniences. They are frames of
reference that are seen to be more useful than others, more amenable to
convincing
people than other masks, also available for wear.
The truth is that the most dominant doctrine from the beginning of
time has been Maskvaadaya or Maskism, i.e. doctrine pertaining to the
use of masks. We are a species that has used masks to disguise
ourselves, mislead and confuse people, hide blemish, dodge the need to
apologize or justify, lie, erase and in the final instance open
ourselves to the ultimate slippage, that of tripping over our make-up
and losing identity.
Economic determinism
What was most interesting about the line was the arrogance and the
self-delusion of assuming that Marxism (ok, the particular variety that
the Aurorists subscribe to) is not a mask that it rebels against Masks,
Maskism and Maskists. It made me think of Marxism and Marxists as such
have existed in this island and elsewhere. The biggest error was to
think that Marxism was an ‘other’ of Capitalism, which is of course
nothing more than a half-truth in terms of desired telos, paradigm of
development, species-primacy and economic determinism. It was just
another version of that which was called the dominant ideology of the
time.
Marxism was a mask that a lot of people wore, some conscious of what
it hid and some quite ignorant about it all. It allowed people to
indulge in the fiction that they were somehow being anti-West (and all
that this term connotes) while engage in a fairly old element of the
colonial enterprise; bashing things ‘native’ especially culture. There
was a facelessness advocated by Marxists (only ‘class’ being exempt)
which naturally inflicted the greatest violence upon majorities, i.e.
Sinhalese and Buddhists in Sri Lanka. It allowed them, at the same time,
to champion minority issues, even to the point of legitimating myth and
legend and vilifying any assertion of culture or history by the
Sinhalese and/or Buddhists as being chauvinistic and/or fundamentalist.
When you call for culture to be taken out of the equation while
exempting minority identity and identity politics, you are essentially
declaring war on the Sinhalese and Buddhists.
Social inequalities
Marxists played on social inequalities and citizenship anomalies that
cut across community-identity and persuaded many to wear its apparently
emancipatory mask. For a while. The personal political trajectories of
the most ardent Marxists and the identities that they sought to suppress
by the Marxist mask show a decided political project that had nothing to
do with class or capitalism, nothing to do with resolving anomalies
pertaining to production relations. That was a Maskism that was quite
effective.
It shows that we sometimes wear masks believing they are our own skin
or the skin we would like to live in. It is good to be aware of skins
and masks, I think. It is good to consider the proposition that Marxism
is a Maskism and a far more pernicious one than most Maskisms around,
especially as it arrived not as detractor but as saviour. That’s a line
from Umberto Eco’s lovely novel, The Name of the Rose; that the devil
arrives in the garb of the emancipator. Louis Althusser said that
ideology resides within.
It is something that we learnt from the Buddha’s life; where Maara
launches his final battle with the ascetic Siddhartha by appearing in
the image of the ascetic.
Self-reflection
There are masks and masks, Marxists and Maskists, Marxisms and
Maskisms. A bit of self-reflection and the occasional rubbing of skin to
see if you are still wearing the one you came with or at least one which
you really want to wear and not something someone else has convinced you
becomes you more would not harm in these days of masks and maskings.
Anyway, good luck to the Aurorists, even though they’ve garbed
themselves in the anecdotal skins of another people who themselves were
duped to wear masks that had little to do with who they were.
[email protected]
|