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| Sunday, 5 January 2003 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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The ecstasy and danger of iconoclasm Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake I was pleasantly surprised to find a translated summary of this column which was titled 'The sad lumpenisation of the bourgeoisie' appearing in the December issue of 'Balaya' a publication of 'Ravaya.' In choosing a name for this monthly magazine Managing Editor Victor Ivan has obviously gone to the heart of the matter. Balaya after all means power and nothing is possible, whether for the good or ill, without (political) power. If politics is the art of the possible power is the engine of politics. Not for Ivan the cosy, literary-sounding magazine nomenclatures. He believes in exposing the entrails of contemporary politics and exhibiting the nature of power in its many facets. 'Balaya' is a somewhat heavy-weight affair and this comes naturally to a publication which obviously sees itself as the natural heir to a tradition of intellectual-academic journalism originating with the 'Sanskruthi' in the 1950s and continuing into the 1970-90s with 'Mavatha.' While the former was more literary and aesthetic the latter was more pronouncedly political but what the demise of both (although 'Sanskruthi' has now been revived by S. G. Samarasinghe) testify to is the lack of resources and the lack of a large enough literate readership to sustain such a venture. High Culture and Popular Culture 'Balaya' has cast its net wide refusing to be circumscribed either by political or literary-aesthetic considerations and its December issue ranges from essays on ragging in universities to a studied exposition of the thinking of Hannah Arendt by Kumudu Kusum Kumara, from a discussion on photography between Ralex Ranasinghe and Padmakumara Mettasena (representing two generations and two schools) to criticisms of fiction and the cinema. It effortlessly straddles the divide between High Culture and Popular Culture with essays on Munidasa Kumaratunga and a discussion with two Indian new wave cinema directors Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Gautam Ghosh and a racy translation from the American musical 'Miss Saigon' by W. Jayasiri. Obviously magazines like 'Balaya' and 'London' (a publication of the X Group) are addressed to an audience quite different from those to which 'Sanskruthi' and 'Mavatha' were directed. These differences also illustrate the changing intellectual temper of the times. 'Sanskruthi' for example was the product of a bi-lingual set of the intelligentsia which was produced by primarily the Peradeniya University in the 1950s and the 1960s, the golden afternoon of the liberal intelligentsia. This was basically an intellectual class which had its roots in the village but had been exposed to a liberal classical or literary education at the universities. They can be justly described as the first bearers of a modern sensibility in a post-Independence context. In a country which had attained political independence without any national liberation struggle they were a first generation of radicals whether in politics or the arts. In politics they tended to gravitate towards the LSSP which was perceived as the most radical political party of the times at least paying ritual homage to the Revolution whenever it could take time off from its parliamentary duties. In the literature and the arts this generation was worshipping at the temples of Leavis, Lawrence and Gide. They were essentially formalists as personified by the poetry of Siri Gunasinghe or the drama of Sarachchandra. The holy text in this regard was Sarachchandra's 'Kalpana Lokaya' where an almost mythic status was given to the individual sensibility. Moving as if in a trance between the fictive and real worlds this intelligentsia heard the rumbles of the coming political and social struggles only distantly ensconced comfortably as they were in their cloud-capped ivory towers in the hills of Hantana. What was interesting about the editors of 'Sanskruthi' was that they were already employed either in the Government service or in the universities. They were no callow young men moved by a sense of idealism but a set of mature intellectuals with a conscious sense of mission. S. G. Samarasinghe belonged to the Sri Lanka Administrative Service while Susil Sirivardana had returned after studying English at Cambridge. Others like Piyal Somaratne were also Government servants (although on lower rungs of the administration) while yet others were school teachers or university lecturers. It is clear therefore that this intelligentsia saw as its designated task carrying new ideas and fresh ways of thinking to a new class of the exclusively Sinhala educated which had been released as a result of the mono-lingual education of the 1960s and after. The tragedy, however, was that when this new class of mono-lingual youth stirred it was not in the direction envisaged by the older intelligentsia. When in April 1970 they took up arms under the banner of the JVP they were moved neither by liberal democratic nor Left democratic sentiments. Anchored though the JVP was in a hotch-potch of Marxism what fuelled the April revolt was basically lower mid-class frustrations, class envy and conspiratorial notions of capturing state power through armed insurrection. This was a far cry from the liberal humanism which the older intelligentsia had been propagating in the previous decade. 'Mavatha' which began publication in the mid-1970s responded to this by assuming a pronouncedly political complexion. Edited by Susil Sirivardana and Piyal Somaratne it sought to link the political and cultural struggles in a single continuity. This magazine carried long editorials and essays which subjected Sri Lanka's history, social formation, the political structure and forms of culture to a Marxist critique from what appeared to be a Maoist standpoint. They appeared to stand for a Marxism with indigenous roots. Civil society Magazines such as 'London' (and its predecessor 'Mathota') are as different as can be envisaged from these formal staid publications of the 1950-80s. Technologically they are very sophisticated in their presentation and finish and make use of all the devices of post-modernist art to capture the attention of their readership. Written in colloquial Sinhala they are irreverent and even iconoclastic. In fact their primary function during the past five years of their existence has been to smash all the idols of the contemporary civil society pantheon. In fact this whole concept of a civil society which has largely been a construct of a post-Marxist intellitentsia is a huge joke to these iconoclastic post-Modernists. They have seen as their mission the deflating of all kinds of civil society figures ranging from pretentious politicians to pompous intellectuals and artistes and writers, dramatists and film-makers, even singers and sportsmen. Their gods are not Marx and Gramsci but Fucault and Derrida. On their own admission they are a self-taught generation having learnt English by themselves but now claiming to have understood and grasped the most dense and obscure prose of the post-Modernist sages and savants. Self-taught generation This then is a set of young people who are addressing a like-minded set of the young and this is what differentiates them from the older intelligentsia which saw as its mission carrying new ideas to a different generation of the young. This placed them in a relationship of patronage to the young which has been totally erased with the post-Modernist generation. There is no generational gulf here for both those who carry the message and those who receive the message belong to the same generation and are sprung from the same milieu. They are perfectly at home with the contemporary Popular Culture and view it without any hang-ups or prejudices. In an interview with 'Balaya' Deepthi Kumara Gunaratne (who with Nirmal Ranjith Devasiri is one of the two high priests of the X Group) says that contemporary Sri Lanka exists in a vacuum. There is no guidance offered by traditional authority such as the Sangha, Law and Order or other such political or social institutions. Therefore each person has been compelled to find out the meaning of life by himself/herself. The dominant model of contemporary society is Merchant Capital but even the intelligentsia has failed to recognise the dominance this exerts. All the projects initiated by the intelligentsia have been upset by its attachment to money, commodities and even sexual relationships and today the intelligentsia stands for diametrically opposite goals from what they might fondly imagine. There is no organic relationship between these projects and the people but they are mediated by this intermediary intelligentsia for Merchant Capital itself is the embodiment of the hegemony of the intermediary. By demolishing the civil society figures who have thus acted as intermediaries the X Group has cleared the ground for a direct dialogue between itself and the people, says Gunaratne. Continuing, Gunaratne says that the open market economy opened up the opportunities for the urban lumpen classes and for example the young men around Negombo town to go to countries such as Italy, make money and comeback. With that money they introduced buses on to the roads which run with no respect for the Highway Code. So there is a societal breakdown from bottom to the top and not vice versa as in other countries. It is this class which has captured power in society and as a result for the first time the people have been permitted to engage in a direct transaction with the capitalist market, he says. The X Group obviously relishes the vacant spaces left behind as the result of its iconoclastic conduct for on its own admission it wants to 'clear the ground'. But having forced out the older players from the game the question is what new game it wishes to play. The danger is that by demolishing the venerable figures of civil society (some of them no doubt over-inflated and vacuuous) the X Group is also in danger of destroying the ideological and moral underpinnings which keep a society whole and intact. The X Group For example, there is the danger that a new generation coming under its tutelage will begin to treat everything - whether it is politics or works of art - as relative and lacking in any absolute value. A university lecturer for example complained recently that the X Group nullifies all dialogue by reducing those who come into collision with it to their psychological natures and motivations. This kind of approach can only breed a crass cynicism which is not anchored in any kind of worthwhile values. In the interview with 'Balaya' Gunaratne has said that the young wish to live as human beings, to love and build up families even as they are trapped in the on-going charade. Sinking into the swamp Being young themselves the X Group seems to believe that it is peculiarly qualified to work with and among the young unlike the generations which have preceded it. This may well be so but the danger is that if it is not armed with a proper ideology and a framework of values its iconoclasm can deteriorate into nihilism and its critique into destructive cynicism. Take for example its dubious thesis that society today is run by a newly-aggrandised lumpen class (whatever happened to the comprador bourgeoisie and the upper bureaucracy? Even if we take this thesis at its face value how does the X Group expect to engage these new bucaneers? Isn't there the danger inherent in its posturings of the X Group itself sinking into the swamp along with the new lumpens? |
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