Michel Foucault and some sinhalese writers

Since the resurgence of interest in post-modern art and the diverse application of post-modern literary theories in Sinhalese contemporary literature albeit as clichés, it is pertinent to examine French philosopher Michel Foucault's work. Although Foucault himself rejected the notion of identifying him as a post-structuralist and post-modern theorist, particularly his theoretical explanation of power structures both at macro and micro levels have shed light on the analysis of modern society at large.

Foucault is considered as one of the best modern analysts and theorists whose works have profoundly influenced the course of human thinking. One of the reasons for his influence is vast array of subjects and topic he has covered through writing covering Marxism, freedom, ethics, death penalty, discipline, history and historiography, identity, humanism, morality and moral systems and even in Iran. Although Foucault's work is often flagdown as one of the inspirations for various identity movements and schools. Foucault himself favours disbanding identity, rather than its creation or preservation. Foucault defines identity as a form of suppression and a way of exercising authority over people and preventing them from moving outside fixed boundaries.

Madness and civilisation

One of his early works Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique' was published first in 1961 in French and later translated into English under the title Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. This is considered Foucault's first major publication which he wrote while he was the Director of the Maison de France in Sweden. Although the book chronicles the social and physical exclusion of lepers in the Middle Ages, it is not an account of how society treated or ill-treated its lowest citizens but the power play at work. This excellent and forceful account, traces the codes or "epistemes" responsible for the shaping of madness from the Renaissance and up to the late nineteenth century. He maps the history of insanity from it being considered as a virtually harmless "wisdom of folly", to it being considered as a disease in the age of confinement and the psychiatric clinic.

Foucault, among other things, argues that that the earlier position held by the lepers was subsequently taken over by madness. For instance, he points out that ship of fools in 15th century is literarlly the practice of sending off mad people in ships. Foucault describes that in the 17th century, the members of the society were institutionalized in a movement he termed out as 'great confinement '. However, it was in the eighteenth century that madness was began to consider as a reverse of Reason and finally in the nineteenth century as mental illness. He also argues that madness was silenced by Reason.

His second major work which was in a way, a continuum of the previous strain of thinking in 'Madness and Civilisation', examined the history of the progression of medical profession. 'The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception' (Naissance de la clinique: une archéologie du regard médical) was first published in 1963 in France and an English translation was published in 1973. Rudimentarily it traces the progression of medical profession. Thought it was intended to examine, in limited scope, specialised institutions such as hospitals and prisons, Foucault treated the subject in the wider social space encompassing process of governing the population at large.

His other books such as 'Death and The Labyrinth' which is his only work of literature where Foucault explores theory, criticism and psychology and 'The Order of Things' ( Les Mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines) was originally published in 1966. The book among other things, established Foucault as one of the leading academics in France.

The central thesis of the book is that all periods of history has specific conditioned truth which makes a discourse. For instance, arts, science and culture are all manifestation of that discourse at a given time in history. Foucault argues that these conditions of discourse have changed over the period of time in major and sudden shifts from one period to another.

Another major work of Foucault The Archaeology of Knowledge' (L'Archéologie du Savoir) was published in 1969. This work refers to Anglo-American analytical philosophy, particularly speech act theory. According to some critics this publication provides an anti-humanist examination of the human sciences including psychology.

In ' Discipline and Punish', Foucault examines the change of punishments in French society in which he describes what he calls ' Technological Punishment ' and Monarchical Punishment'. He points out that 'Disciplinary Punishment' is the modern practice of punishment.

What is the principal difference between 'Disciplinary Punishment' and 'Monarchical Punishment 'as Foucault argues is that Disciplinary punishment leads to self-policing by the populace as opposed to brutal displays of authority from the Monarchical period?

Foucault argues that modern society exercises its controlling system of power and knowledge and those ancient prisons have been replaced with clear and visible ones. What he points out here is that increasing visibility leads to power located on an individual level and that there is a possibility of tracking individuals throughout their lives. For instance, this tracking the individuals or surveillance runs through the modern society from maximum security prisons, probation, social workers, police and teachers. All of them are bounded by the (written or unwritten) supervision and application of norms of acceptable behaviour.

Michel Foucault's most referred to work is 'The History of Sexuality' which consists of four volumes. In this publication, among other things he attacks 'the repressive hypothesis' the widespread belief that advocates that individuals should 'restrain' natural sexual drives which is particularly rooted in the society since nineteenth century. This is the central thesis on which most of the critics branded Foucault as a modern day anarchists.

Foucault and contemporary Sinhalese literature

In my view, the influence of Foucault on contemporary Sinhalese literature is minuscule. In most cases, some writers have just used Foucault's name to justify their work of extremely poor quality. Unfortunately it has been a vogue that writers, who have virtually robbed awards, are using names of post-modern theorists such as Michel Foucault to confuse the readers and show off their poorly learnt knowledge of post-modern theories on literature. In simple terms, what they do is to describe their incoherent and poorly written so called literary artefacts as post-modern writing. It has been observed that if there are prose of questionable literary quality, they are being readily described as post-modern writing while poetry of no insights or quality have been described as Haiku.

Their, in my opinion, the time is ripe for those Sinhalese literati to wake up from deep slumber and to seriously study the post-modern philosophers and their work in order to derive maximum out of them and to enrich contemporary Sinhalese literature without they themselves describing their work as post-modernist work! It is only such an enlightened intellectual movement that could only salvage Sinhalese literature at this juncture.

It may be pertinent to provide a quote from a quotation from Foucault's work to describe some of these so called Sinhala writers who cannot write good Sinhalese prose.

"As soon as you start writing, even if it is under your real name, you start to function as somebody slightly different, as a "writer". You establish from yourself to yourself continuities and a level of coherence which is not quite the same as your real life ... All this ends up constituting a kind of neo-identity which is not identical to your identity as a citizen or your social identity, Besides you know this very well, since you want to protect your private life.' Michel Foucault, (2004) 'Je suis un artificier'. In Roger-Pol Droit, ed., Michel Foucault, entretiens Paris: Odile Jacob. (p. 106).