Sri Lankan authors and contemporary English writing took centre stage at “Imaginative Geographies”, a special panel organised by the University College London’s (UCL) VIRTUAL IAS Festival, organised by the UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies to celebrate its fifth anniversary.
The VIRTUAL IAS Festival was an online festival held from 4 to 6 May under the umbrella of “Alternative Epistemologies”, a three-day programme of conversations and performances of every kind.
Imaginative Geographies
Imaginative Geographies took place on the second day of the festival and was a panel co-hosted by the Department of English at the University of Colombo and the Centre for the Study of South Asia (CSSA) and the Indian Ocean World at UCL, bringing authors and literary critics into conversation on Sri Lanka as an “imaginative geography”. The concept of imaginative geography is based on the work of Edward Said and the term he coined, “imagined geographies”. Imagined geographies refers to the perception of a space, area, or locale created through creative imagery, literary texts, and/or discourses.
Imaginative Geographies reflected on Sri Lanka as a place that is imaginatively named, framed, and worlded through literary narrative across different periods/moments in time through the world of Sri Lankan authors whose fiction, performance, poetry, and travelogue are set in Sri Lanka. At the heart of such a mapping are questions concerned with how we understand Sri Lanka at different times in history and how we place ourselves within the Sri Lanka that is created through literary narratives as well as the conditions under which this knowledge is developed.
The panel featured three themed conversations between Sri Lankan writers and critics based at the University of Colombo. The first between Ameena Hussein and Shermal Wijewardene on mapping and routes; the second between Packiyanathan Ahilan, Kanchuka Dharmasiri, and Ruhanie Perera on translation and poetics; and the third between Shyam Selvadurai and Neloufer de Mel on diaspora and exile. The panel was moderated by UCL-CSSA Co-Director Tariq Jazeel.
Mapping and routes
The first conversation of Imaginative Geographies featured Perera-Hussein Publishing House author and Co-founder Ameena Hussein and University of Colombo Department of English Head Dr. Shermal Wijewardene.
Hussein, whose most recent work, the non-fiction book Chasing Tall Tales and Mystics – Ibn Battuta in Sri Lanka: A personal journey, speaks about the 14th Century Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta and his travels to Sri Lanka, shared that she and Dr. Wijewardene discussed Chasing Tall Tales and Mystics – Ibn Battuta in Sri Lanka: A personal journey as an imagined geography on its own. “In a way, the book is an imagined geography because in the future, people will read it and know what it was like to travel in Sri Lanka not just in the 14th Century, but in the 21st Century as well,” Hussein said, explaining how it captures both Sri Lanka from Ibn Battuta’s perspective in the 14th Century as well as her own when retracing his footsteps 750 years later.
On how she had to imagine the geography of 14th Century Sri Lanka while writing the book, Hussein explained that she had to draw heavily on multiple sources from old Sri Lankan sources if they existed (and some of which have never been translated) as well as colonial British, Arab, Chinese, and Persian, and write and image the geography of Sri Lanka both physically and culturally through the eyes of these writers and sources and reconcile it with what she was seeing as a traveller in the 21st Century trying to follow in Ibn Battuta’s footsteps.
Hussein shared that during the segment, she and Dr. Wijewardene discussed how Chasing Tall Tales and Mystics – Ibn Battuta in Sri Lanka: A personal journey stood as its own imagined geography.
Translation and poetics
The second conversation of Imaginative Geographies featured poet and University of Jaffna senior lecturer in art history Packiyanathan Ahilan; theatre director, translator, and University of Peradeniya Department of English lecturer Kanchuka Dharmasiri; and performer, researcher, and University of Colombo Department of English lecturer Ruhanie Perera.
Moderated by Ruhanie Perera, this segment of Imaginative Geographies dealt with translation and memory and how translators work with and through writers’ memories, locations, and geographies and how that impact translators experience the text they translate.
The segment also saw Packiyanathan Ahilan speak about his new book There Were No Witnesses and read some of his poetry from the book.
“It was really wonderful to work together and exchange ideas on issues,” Dharmasiri said, adding: “We spoke about how we witness and obliterate some images in our history and imagination. Something all three of us focused on as writers and translators was how we each witness the moments in history.”
Diaspora and exile
The third segment of the panel featured acclaimed Sri Lankan-Canadian author Shyam Selvadurai, whose first novel, Funny Boy, published in 1994, won the W.H. Smith/ Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Lambda Literary Award in the US and University of Colombo Department of English Senior Professor of English (Chair) Neloufer de Mel, the author of Militarising Sri Lanka: Popular Culture, Memory, and Narrative in the Armed Conflict (2007) and Women and the Nation’s Narrative: Gender and Nationalism in 20th Century Sri Lanka (2001). Her recent journal publications and edited volumes have been on postwar Sri Lanka, providing feminist, postcolonial, and cultural studies perspectives on questions of justice, displacement, theatre for peacebuilding, and disability performance.
This segment looked at what it means to situate oneself as a writer in/of Sri Lanka in relation to citizenship, travel, war memory, politics, diaspora, gender, and queerness. It also addressed literary genres – their hybridities and performativities, questions of translation and adaptation, and the material conditions (including writing and reading habits) that de-territorialise and re-territorialise Sri Lanka in particular ways for the contemporary reader.
Representing Sri Lankan contemporary writing on an international platform
Taking Sri Lanka to the world, in whatever sphere is always bound to be a humbling experience, with Hussein sharing that she was “honoured and delighted to be part of the panel and talk to different people, who have had very different experiences, and hear their ideas”.
Dharmasiri too spoke of the diversity of the group, saying: “It was a fabulous experience being part of such a dynamic group. I found the conversations to be really inspiring and to hear how authors like Ameena Hussein and Shyam Selvadurai experience their creative process was very exciting. It was also a welcome opportunity in the context of the pandemic to be able to connect with an international audience.”
Mapping and routes
The first conversation of Imaginative Geographies featured Perera-Hussein Publishing House author and Co-founder Ameena Hussein and University of Colombo Department of English Head Dr. Shermal Wijewardene.
Hussein, whose most recent work, the non-fiction book Chasing Tall Tales and Mystics – Ibn Battuta in Sri Lanka: A personal journey, speaks about the 14th Century Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta and his travels to Sri Lanka, shared that she and Dr. Wijewardene discussed Chasing Tall Tales and Mystics – Ibn Battuta in Sri Lanka: A personal journey as an imagined geography on its own. “In a way, the book is an imagined geography because in the future, people will read it and know what it was like to travel in Sri Lanka not just in the 14th Century, but in the 21st Century as well,” Hussein said, explaining how it captures both Sri Lanka from Ibn Battuta’s perspective in the 14th Century as well as her own when retracing his footsteps 750 years later.
On how she had to imagine the geography of 14th Century Sri Lanka while writing the book, Hussein explained that she had to draw heavily on multiple sources from old Sri Lankan sources if they existed (and some of which have never been translated) as well as colonial British, Arab, Chinese, and Persian, and write and image the geography of Sri Lanka both physically and culturally through the eyes of these writers and sources and reconcile it with what she was seeing as a traveller in the 21st Century trying to follow in Ibn Battuta’s footsteps.
Hussein shared that during the segment, she and Dr. Wijewardene discussed how Chasing Tall Tales and Mystics – Ibn Battuta in Sri Lanka: A personal journey stood as its own imagined geography.
Translation and poetics
The second conversation of Imaginative Geographies featured poet and University of Jaffna senior lecturer in art history Packiyanathan Ahilan; theatre director, translator, and University of Peradeniya Department of English lecturer Kanchuka Dharmasiri; and performer, researcher, and University of Colombo Department of English lecturer Ruhanie Perera.
Moderated by Ruhanie Perera, this segment of Imaginative Geographies dealt with translation and memory and how translators work with and through writers’ memories, locations, and geographies and how that impact translators experience the text they translate.
The segment also saw Packiyanathan Ahilan speak about his new book There Were No Witnesses and read some of his poetry from the book.
“It was really wonderful to work together and exchange ideas on issues,” Dharmasiri said, adding: “We spoke about how we witness and obliterate some images in our history and imagination. Something all three of us focused on as writers and translators was how we each witness the moments in history.”
Diaspora and exile
The third segment of the panel featured acclaimed Sri Lankan-Canadian author Shyam Selvadurai, whose first novel, Funny Boy, published in 1994, won the W.H. Smith/ Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Lambda Literary Award in the US and University of Colombo Department of English Senior Professor of English (Chair) Neloufer de Mel, the author of Militarising Sri Lanka: Popular Culture, Memory, and Narrative in the Armed Conflict (2007) and Women and the Nation’s Narrative: Gender and Nationalism in 20th Century Sri Lanka (2001). Her recent journal publications and edited volumes have been on postwar Sri Lanka, providing feminist, postcolonial, and cultural studies perspectives on questions of justice, displacement, theatre for peacebuilding, and disability performance.
This segment looked at what it means to situate oneself as a writer in/of Sri Lanka in relation to citizenship, travel, war memory, politics, diaspora, gender, and queerness. It also addressed literary genres – their hybridities and performativities, questions of translation and adaptation, and the material conditions (including writing and reading habits) that de-territorialise and re-territorialise Sri Lanka in particular ways for the contemporary reader.
Representing Sri Lankan contemporary writing on an international platform
Taking Sri Lanka to the world, in whatever sphere is always bound to be a humbling experience, with Hussein sharing that she was “honoured and delighted to be part of the panel and talk to different people, who have had very different experiences, and hear their ideas”.
Dharmasiri too spoke of the diversity of the group, saying: “It was a fabulous experience being part of such a dynamic group. I found the conversations to be really inspiring and to hear how authors like Ameena Hussein and Shyam Selvadurai experience their creative process was very exciting. It was also a welcome opportunity in the context of the pandemic to be able to connect with an international audience.”