Nandaka Maduranga Kalugampitiya
The biggest part of the challenge of a critical scholar in the humanities is having to engage critically with the very realities that define her existence as a social being. She cannot even begin to comment on the focus of her study without creating shock waves that would hit her own self in some form. One could argue that the scholars in the field of the humanities are part of what is being studied in one way or another. Critical scholarship in those fields entails destabilizing the ground beneath their own feet.
An essential part of scholarly/scientific inquiry is being able to objectify what is being studied and examine it closely but at a distance, that too in a manner that scholar’s personal biases do not affect the judgement. Any failure to comply with this requirement immediately brands the study as unscientific. To try to understand this using an example situation, I would assume that a scientist who conducts her research in a laboratory setting and who experiments with sodium and chlorine as chemical elements have the privilege of entering the experiment without any personal and emotional ties to either of the elements, placing one element in contact with the other without having to raise questions about her own existence, and observing and recording the outcome of the experiment without having to simultaneously examine what sort of implications the outcome has had for her as a person. The findings of the experiment may certainly advance her/him in the domain of science, but it is unlikely that the outcome of the study would result in any transformation within her as a social being.
The same privilege is not available for the (critical) scholars in the humanities. What chemical elements are for the scientist, the different social, political, cultural, gender, ethnic, racial, and religious identities are for those in the humanities. What the controlled, and also largely predictable, laboratory environment is for the scientist, the uncontrolled, even erratic, society is for those in the humanities. What the scientific experiments where the composition and behaviour of the individual chemical elements are explored is for the scientist, a close examination of phenomena and topics that cut across the categories of the social, the political, the cultural, and the religious is for those in the humanities.
The relatively clear differentiation or separation that is there between the scientist’s personal space and the laboratory setting where she conducts her research is not there in the case of her counterpart in the humanities. The latter does not have a separate laboratory setting that she can step into from her personal space, as the social space, which is her site of research, has her personal space already embedded in it. The freedom that the scientist has to cut herself off from what shapes her existence as a social and political being, as she enters her laboratory, is not available for her counterpart in the humanities, for the simple reason that the social and the political, which define her life outside her research, is also at the core of what she engages with in her research. Even in a setting where the latter locks herself up in a room and cuts herself off from the rest of society, the social and the political continue to define both her perspective and the object of study. Even the scientist who conducts groundbreaking research in her field has the option of taking her life, defined by the social, the political, the cultural and the religious, for granted, as her success is measured purely on the basis of her scholarly output; however, the scholar in the humanities, irrespective of whether she is an experienced researcher or not, would have to acknowledge the nexus between her personal life and her scholarly life, explicitly or implicitly, and her engagement with the chosen object of study will entail some sort of an engagement with her own existence.
To use an example from the field of language studies which my work is primarily in, New Varieties of English, like what is called Sri Lankan English, is a topic that I try to engage with in both my teaching and research. Approached from a critical point of view, Sri Lankan English as a New Variety of English is more a political category than a linguistic one. The claims that you make may be based on linguistic evidence, but the conceptualization of a separate form of English as Sri Lankan English even on the basis of objective linguistic evidence is primarily a political claim. The creation of such a category invariably leads to questioning the identity of English as a unified language. It also results in destabilizing and redefining the positions of English, Tamil, and Sinhala in the broader society. As a speaker of Sinhala and English, as my first language and second language respectively, and also whose identity is defined by the complex interrelations between the two languages in the local context, I cannot even begin to comment on the idea of Sri Lankan English without engaging with my own existence and without upsetting the culture that defines that existence, at least to a certain extent.
Even when I find the case for Sri Lankan English to be convincing, I feel compelled to word the arguments carefully. This feeling of compulsion to word the arguments carefully is certainly in recognition of the need to make academically-sound arguments; however, in addition to that, it has also to do with my position outside the social class which has traditionally been seen as having proprietary rights over the language. In that setting, I am less of an academic with an objective mindset than of a strategist who is enmeshed in the ethnic and class relations that define the topic of Sri Lankan English. At the same time, in a context where one’s knowledge of English is a primary determiner of success in society and what is predominantly valued is the so-called proper forms of English, I have had to ask myself if any claims, including the most convincing, academically-sound ones, in the direction of legitimizing Sri Lankan English should not be made with caution.
I have also had to reconcile between two seemingly contradictory positions involved in making a case for Sri Lankan English, especially in the context of an English Honours Degree programme, that too at a leading university in the country. On the one hand, making a case for Sri Lankan English entails encouraging deviation from the established norm/s of the language; on the other hand, considering the language focus of the Degree programme, the need to require the students to make their arguments using a normative form of English that would be recognized internationally could not be overlooked. At one level, this seeming contradiction could easily be dismissed as hypocrisy, but a closer and more serious reading of the situation would see in it a certain “maneuvering” and “negotiating” that the scholars in the discipline of English Studies, especially those stationed in peripheral contexts like ours, are constrained to undertake in their engagement with the topic of English in postcolonial settings. The claims that the scholars make may be based on a careful examination of the relevant linguistic evidence, but in addition to that, there is also a certain identity politics that the scholars have no option but to engage with in the process of making those claims.
Accordingly, to make a claim in the humanities from a critical point of view is also to question in some form what defines one’s own identity, and this may not be the most comfortable undertaking for many of us in the field. This explains, at least to a certain extent, why some scholarly engagements with history result in mere glorifications of the mainstream historical narratives; why some scholarly engagements with literature and language result in a mere celebration of the mainstream literary traditions and hegemonic languages; how some scholarly engagements with the idea of culture directly subscribe to the position that culture should always be preserved and celebrated. Such approaches leave the status-quo largely untouched, and therefore the amount of unsettling that the scholars have to deal with is minimal. How much value they are in a position to add to the existing scholarship, of course, is a question.
Any act of critical scholarship in the field of the humanities entails the scholar having to challenge in some form what defines her personal existence. This may not be the most comfortable move to make, but that is the only way the scholar could try to make a contribution of value to the field. It is important that this dilemma that the critical scholars in the humanities have to go through is recognized for what it is.
