– වමානුෂික –
now there comes a time, Vāseṭṭha, when this world contracts now there comes a time, Vāseṭṭha, when this world expands - “Vāseṭṭhasutta”, Majjhima Nikāya In this short essay, I explore how David Scott’s idea of “problem-space”, as conceptualized in his book Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality, can enable a reading practice that is both sensitive... Continue Reading →
Modernizing Composition: Sinhala Song, Poetry, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Sri Lanka. By Garret Field. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. 213 pages. ISBN: 9780520294714 (paperback). $34.95. doi: 10.1525/luminos.27 Praveen Tilakaratne Two years ago, during a personal conversation, the late Professor Carlo Fonseka—perhaps more widely known as a lyricist than as a physician—remarked that the... Continue Reading →
Ionesco’s play, Rhinoceros, has meant different things to me during different times. Previously, in moments of ethnic and religious tension, when even some of my most intelligent and moderate neighbours uncritically espoused a low-key xenophobia, a slippery slope into outright racism, Rhinoceros seemed to ‘speak to’ the issues of contemporary ethno-racism in Sri Lanka, drawing... Continue Reading →
There is something in this sudden start, familiar but not, nostalgic but never past, quotidian but somehow sublime, that I cannot get over. The sun rises over the Pridelands, and I am caught up in endless waves of some indescribable feeling, some affect, let us say; The Lion King was never quite a movie, an... Continue Reading →
Few days ago I came across an eloquent and passionate article by Senel Wanniarachchi titled ‘On Sex, Tara the Buddhist Deity at the British Museum and Brownness in the Colonies’ —a piece that certainly demands to be read, a piece that contains touching personal reflections and thoughts that undoubtedly demanded to be written. Reading the article,... Continue Reading →
—Praveen Tilakaratne I ‘The goal of all life is death’, wrote Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Last week, on All Souls’ Day, I happened to be at a service held at the cemetery in which my grandmother is buried, allowing for a moment, fervour and affect to get the better of me. A... Continue Reading →
(Scroll down for the English version of this write-up) දිගු කලක් මුළුල්ලේ පැවතුණ මගේ නාට්ය පරිවර්ජනය ඊයේ, එනම් 2018 අගෝස්තු 3වන දින, නිමාවකට පත් වූයේ ශාන්ත තෝමස් ප්රාථමික විදුහලේ ඉතා ගරා වැටුණු ශාලාවක ප්රදර්ශනය කෙරුණු 'ද ට්රිප්ස්' සහ 'පෙයාර්' නාට්ය නැරඹීමෙනි. ඩස්ටින් රොබර්ට් බ්ලේක්මන්ගේ 'ද ට්රිප්ස්' නාට්යය මෙදින අධ්යක්ෂනය කරනු ලැබුවේ සාචි ගමගේ වන අතර... Continue Reading →
(මෙම විචාරයේ සිංහල පරිවර්තනයක් ද පහත දැක්වේ.) Before the commencement of the opening night of Jehan Aloysius’s musical Rag, and after staring uneasily at the various merchandise (caps and key tags with the title of the play printed on them) being sold outside the Lionel Wendt, one of my batchmates jokingly commented that Rag, the... Continue Reading →
The following write-up is a ‘bad’ summary of the Introduction and Chapter 1 of Terry Eagleton’s The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), which runs the risk of containing my own interruptive thoughts, as well as (perhaps necessary) reductionisms. Similar summaries of the subsequent chapters may follow this, but I certainly do recommend that... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KrOZe2SxoQ Mark Gungor’s famous joke on the difference between men’s brains and women’s brains has a much more interesting, even dissident subtext, I think, which is of great contemporary relevance. The joke is as follows: “Men’s brains are made up of boxes, nice compartmentalized boxes, the rule being that the boxes do not – and... Continue Reading →
Wamānushika 