Unmaking ‘the’ Meaning

It has been quite a sometime that I was invited to write a column to the newly published newspaper, SUNDAY MORNING, by its editor Mandana Ismail. Though I have promised to contribute to the paper, I was not able to fulfill it until this week. The reason for my failure was partly based on the usual fear that I had in mind on the difficulty of the task of providing a regular weekly column without any delay. On the other hand, I was also bit reluctant to start a new column due to the uncertain nature of the political situation in the country. As some would agree with me, it is very difficult to judge the ongoing political situation in the country and it is not possible at all to forecast the future of our political arena. Since the situation got very complicated while taking an unpredictable shape as such, I have been postponing Mandana’s offer to write a column until now.

While this ambiguity on commencing the piece and the uncertainty on the possible topic for a column and a particular line to start the first writing was preoccupying my thinking I was invited to participate for the launching event of a new publication project, under the name of KEYWORDS FOR TODAY, which was held at the University of Peradeniya during last week. This project was initiated by the University of Pittsburgh in USA and several world renowned scholars, including my friend, Prof Arjuna Parakrama from our University have contributed to this publication. The project has been published by the Oxford University Press in London. The book mainly addresses one of the central philosophical issue of language, the MEANING of keywords that we use in our communications. The project is not a new one; it is a continuation and upgrading of the Raymond William’s classic “Keywords for 21 Century”, which is acclaimed as one of the foundational writings on the language studies in our times. William’s work, as the new Keywords project rightly pointed out, ‘helped to solve both very particular and a very general problem which he (William) was wrestling in that decade’.

I think that my choice to launch the newspaper column also in the same line which this publication has addressed is a spot-on decision. However, I would like to add some socio-political emphasis on it rather than a philosophical and linguistic focus. It is true that issues related to the meaning of our socio-political decision-making have always been very problematic and uncertain, even though the political society thinks that their decision-making is crystal clear and certain. Philosophically speaking, one of the main issues that the 20th century philosophers debated was whether the language (words) has a fixed meaning which is assigned to each word in each time universally or the meaning of a word is changed according to the context in which that particular w0rd is used. This epistemological debate itself divides entire western philosophical schools into two main sections, one section as analytical tradition (based on British empirical system) and other as phenomenological tradition, which is based on the Continental European (mainly Germen and French) system. It can be argued that Raymond Williams’ project was aligning with Phenomenological philosophical tradition though he was employed at Cambridge University through half of his professional career.

I strongly believe that looking at the main argument of Keywords for Today project and identifying the main reason for that study would be of much help in understanding a postcolonial society like ours. The main argument of the Keywords project was to question (then) incumbent version of the meaning of our language, which Herbert Marcus named as ‘one dimensional- positivistic way of defining words’. Williams study suggests that their might be ‘multiple readings/definitions’ for such words in different contexts. And, in order to understand the meaning of the word, we need to look beyond the dictionaries or indexes and should focus on the ‘practical actions’ which are denoted/generated by the word. In other way, this is to suggest that the meaning of a word would be based not only on the TEXTs but also on the CONTEXTS in which that word occurs.

With this introduction, if we look at the ‘constructed propositional representation’ of our political setting, I would argue that there might be a considerable space to re-engage with the domain of the ‘crisis of meaning’ on one hand; and the domination of ‘a one meaning’ over other meanings should be the important area of intervening in other hand. Deconstructing the ‘one meaning argument’ within the multi-faceted socio-cultural context could be considered as one way to struggle against the political domination of the language. Moreover, moving on with such deconstruction would disclose the true nature of the many ‘hidden nonsenses’ which are already established as realities and true representation of the society.

Therefore, the aim of this column is to engage through a critique on the process of ‘making facts’ and ‘meanings’ in the political domain in Sri Lanka. Further, the objective of this will extend up to unveiling the ‘process of manufacturing the meanings’ in the socio-political and cultural establishments in Sri Lanka.

As for a beginning of this column, we could see how the terms of CIVIL and the CIVIL SOCIETY were constructed in the post colonial Sri Lanka and how does the word CIVIL function in the current socio-political setup. As Keyword for Today suggests that the word CIVIL has undergone rather dramatic changes in its meaning in the different settings of usage and in the different functions denoted through this name. It shows that the term was converted into a modern meaning from Latin and French in 14 th century.

I will go into details of this term in the next column with its functions in Sri Lankan context.

Dr. Charitha Herath (PhD)
University of Peradeniya