Critical perspectives on literature, cinema and culture

Reviewed by Chulaka Dambawinna

Cross-Currents by Prof. Wimal Dissanayake is a collection of essays on arts, culture and cinema.

However, they are intrinsically linked to the proceeding essays on a continuous thread of series intended primarily to introduce to Sri Lankan readers as well as a growing diasporic and cosmopolitan readership the latest literary theories, concepts and personalities.

On the one hand, the essays which are included in the collection 'Encounters' deal with East and the West and diverse cultures across the spectrum of vast humanity and on the other hand, they are insightful essays which , without doubt, add to the corpus of knowledge. The underlying thread of all these essays covering a vast area of culture such as literature, literary theory, Asian and world cinema and cinema criticism, cultural criticism is the uncompromising humanist approach similar to the one enunciated by Edward Said in his magnum opus 'Orientalism'.

Academic model

A significant aspect of critical views and insights thrown into diverse subjects in the course of these essays is that it invariably improved and devised new tools in the contemporary English language, literary criticism and literary appreciation in general and in the popular public sphere of English medium newspapers in Sri Lanka, in particular.

Prof. Dissanayake is noted for operating within a well-framed out academic model in dealing with a myriad of issues in his numerous essays. The author not only ventures beyond the exactitude of 'evident truths" that is said to constrain a work of literature but also rigorously applying the model with which he works in dealing with the issues at hand. It is in this process that the author generates multiplicity of meanings, interpretations and insights on a chosen topic. For instance, in the essay titled 'Fiction and Social History', the author sheds light on the aspects of novel as a codifier of social history.

The author states, "Gunadasa Amarasekera's latest work in his octalogy of novels, Athara Maga was launched recently. It carries forward the story of Piyadasa and his times that were narrated so vividly in the earlier novels. These eight novels constitute a significant moment in the establishment of an intimate and pivotal relationship between the modern Sinhala novel and the public sphere.

Gamanaka Mula (1984) captures presciently the life in pre-Independent Sri Lanka and the awakening of an urban consciousness among the peasantry. Gam Dorin Eliyata (1985), highlights the important changes that took place between 1948, when the country achieved independence, and the social change precipitated by S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike in 1956.

Social formations

The third novel, Inimage Ihalata (1992), is devoted to an examination of the social and political transformations that took place after 1956, and how they shaped the consciousness and sensibility of the protagonist of the octalogy, Piyadasa.

Vankagiriyaka (1993) textualises the disjunctions and turbulence of the 1969s when a crisis of cultural values discernibly set in and the consequent confusion of means and ends that it engendered.

The fifth novel in the chain Yali Maga Vethata (1993) focuses on the appeal of a kind of rural imagery that was pervasive at the time and an attempt to defy the blandishments of Westernisation. Duru Rataka Dukata Kiriyaka (2001) recounts the experiences of Piyadasa who has gone to England to pursue higher studies.

The seventh novel, Gamanaka Mada, reconfigures the crumbling social structures and fading cultural beliefs that he perceives after his return to Sri Lanka from England.

The eighth novel, Athara Maga, advances this narrative focusing on certain disappointments and self-doubts of the protagonist.

As the title of many of the novels indicate, the trope of a journey (Gamana) is central to the experience explored in the eight novels.

In this octalogy, which revolves round the sensibility, hesitations and actions of Piyadasa, Gunadasa Amarasekera has sought to portray the movement of contemporary social history of the island through vividly realised characters and richly textured descriptions and complexities of interpersonal relations.

As indicated in my book, 'Sinhala Novel and the Public Sphere', in which I subject the early seven novels to a detailed analysis, the writings of George Lukas provide us with a productive framework within which we can locate these novels and explore their analytical meaning.

His concepts of reflection totality typicality- are particularly useful in this regard. Gunadasa Amarasekera in his critical works such as Abuddassa Yugayak and Nosevna Kadapatha pointed out the importance of realism and history as constitutive forces.

These ideas constitute a part of the frame of intelligibility that we can bring to the understanding and evaluation of these novels.

Literary theory

These eight novels raise some significant issues related to literary theory. Amarasekera is focusing on the vital interconnections between social history and fiction. He has always been interested in demonstrating the complex ways in which history inflects social life and structures of feeling and individual sensibilities. Examining the topic of history and narrative, the eminent French thinker Paul Ricoeur once pointed out three important facets of it. First, that there is more fiction in history than is normally accepted. Second, narrative fiction is more mimetic than we recognise. Third, there is what he terms 'crossed reference' whereby history and fiction cross upon the fundamental historicity of human experience. These observations of Paul Ricoeur are deeply relevant to an understanding of Amarsekera's intentions." It is obvious that the author establishes a vital connection between novel and the social history and then gets literary theorists such as French thinker Paul Ricoeur to support his argument and also adds his insights into links between novel and social history.

A prominent characteristic of the essays in the book is that the author has employed multiplicity of modern literary and analytical tools such as postmodernism, feminism, structuralism and post-structuralism as well as ancient Sanskrit literary theories particularly in analysing classical Sinhalese literature.

Diverse layers

The author reads the text not only in literature but also in criticising cinema at diverse levels and diverse layers. It is a deep reading and also putting the work at hand in different light. This is an important attribute of a literary critic and master literary theoretician.One of the most interesting aspects of Cross Currents is the fact that Prof. Dissanayake seeks to relate all topics back to a Sri Lankan context. He mentions in one particular chapter that India and Sri Lanka have much in common with Latin America, owing to the fact that all these countries have been colonised and heavily influenced by the West and consequently by Eurocentric thinking. Prof. Dissanayake covers much of this, directly and obliquely, in Cross Currents.

What is also interesting is that he points out that influences from Asia, Africa and Latin America has also begun to impact on mainstream Western Cinema. For example, he mentions that Modern American films, such as Kill Bill, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix trilogy all draw on the Buddhist worldview and the use of martial arts. However, the one tool that is most useful in redressing the Eurocentric bias, is more academic, critical analysis of culture, literature and film, which is not Eurocentric. Prof. Wimal Dissanayake's Cross Currents is an excellent, leading example of this.