Understanding Lankan academics

Mid-October in 2010 made me feel dizzy (partly due to my fast aging and partly due to clouding of my brain with subjects that are indigestible not because of my unwillingness to learn but because of the fact that the academics have their own jargons that ordinary literary columnists like me find difficult to understand)

It was a two-day session of the fifth SLACLALS Conference on 'Postcolonial or Postmodern?' held at Royal Garden Mall in Kandy. In our column we reported and commented on some of the papers read. But there is more to add.

One observation I missed in that piece was the failure to mention that the most senior don in the English department, Dr Nihal Fernando, is the current Head of the Department. Unassuming but with a lot of reassurance and depth he chaired a few slots with dignity and diligence.

If you want to know what SLACLASLS stand for, it is Sri Lanka Association of the Commonwealth Language and Literatures Study. Quite a mouthful!

For the benefit of students of English literature and for others interested let us give some of the topics discussed which we didn't mention in the previous article. Under Aparna Halpe's chairpersonship three papers were read:

Chandana Dissanayake in his Postcolonial Postscript presented a very fine analysis on R L Spittel's Savage Sanctuary.

Tanya Ulawitiya took the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies for her analysis. Titling her paper 'Afloat a Sea of Poppies', she discussed the "Transnational Relations of Industrial Labour in the writing of an internationally known writer from Bengal in India.

I was happy that Ashanthi Ekanayake chose three novels of Lankan foremost writer Punyakante Wijenaike to see the 'Representations of 'Mad Women'' in her fiction. It was quite interesting to note.

In a later session Sivamohan Sumathy took the chair. Two papers were read: Ashley Halpe on 'A New Mode and Model for Sri Lankan Fiction: Tissa Abeysekera's In My Kingdom of the Sun and the Holy Peak. This was an erudite piece and I felt that I had read this elsewhere.

An upcoming Sinhala / English literary critic, Liyanage Amarakeerthi, spoke on 'Sinhala Poetry as a Mode of Cultural Self-Criticism'. He gave a lot of information on the current poetry writing in Sinhala which I learnt afresh.

Walter Perera headed the chair in another session.

Three academics read very useful papers (at least to me for I gathered new knowledge although I didn't much like the way a presenter spoke).

Nadime Gordiner's three works: The Endings of The Late Bourgeois World (1966), Burger's Daughter (1979) and July's People (1981) were taken into account for critical analysis by Margaret Daymond.

One reason why I liked MD speak was her speech was clear, lucid, logical, understandable and without any accent.

Lakmali Jayasinghe, another upcoming scholar, was bent on 'Challenging Colonial Assumptions: A Comparative Study of Ngugi wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat and Beryl Gilroy's Boy-Sandwich'.

Sumathy Sivamohan or rather Sivamohan Sumathy was "Contesting Sovereignty: (Post) Modern Nations and Postcolonial Narratives."

With my poor understanding of the intricacies of politics and the like I found it difficult to comprehend the speaker's thesis. But the examples she quoted were real and not much known.

Finally, Under Chandana Dissanayake's chairmanship, first Tara Senanayake read a paper on "The "Chutnifiction" of Postcolonialism and Post Modernism in Midnight's Children" I don't much like Salman Rushdie whatever his talents might have been. However the paper was interesting.

Next Lal Medawattegedera claiming "An Analysis of War-Related Literature in Sri Lanka" titled his essay "Look Like the 'Innocent Flower. But Be the Serpent under't'" Honestly I didn't understand what he was saying but his attempt to render should have been encouraged. He deserved that.

Lal Medawattegedera, Parvathy Arasanayagam and Premini Amerasinghe read some of their works.

All in all it was a mind bending experience. Best wishes to our academics. Please try to write simply and leave out the phony accent.

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