There is no doubt that many Sri Lankans might have read a poem by Jean Arasanayagam at least once in their lifetime. I remember we had one of her poems ‘Wedding photographs’ in our Ordinary Level literature syllabus in 2013. Jean Arasanayagam (1931-2019) was an original and most renowned poet who appeared in postcolonial Sri Lanka. Her poetry is precious, interesting and serves as an eye opener for the social blindness of the people about ethnic-social issues in the postcolonial society.
Being a Dutch Burger by birth and a Tamil by marriage her poetry attempts at negotiating culture and searching for a cultural identity while criticizing the politics associated with identity politics. Therefore, she explores her multitude of identities within her poetry, which reflects her individual and cultural trauma associated with the identity. Jean’s lifelong thirst to find her cultural identity through the double marginalization that she has experienced from Sinhala people as a Tamil and by the Tamil community as an individual is clearly reflected in her poetry.
She investigates her Dutch originated identity along with the Tamil identity which she gets after her marriage just to find how her position in the society is marginalized as minority ethnic groups under the hegemony of the Sinhala majority. Therefore, through most of her poems, her struggle to define herself is clearly portrayed.
In the poem ‘Mother-in-law’ the poet shows the cultural conflict within the two cultures where she belongs to by her birth and marriage, and her attempt to negotiate between these two cultures in order to reclaim her identity as a female individual. The characters of the mother-in-law from the Tamil culture and the westernized daughter in law from the Burger culture, show the contrast between these two cultures.
The normal conflict between these two roles establishes the idea how hard it is to negotiate between these two cultures. The poet’s desire to be connected or to belong to the culture where she is already tethered is highlighted by exoticising the Tamil culture and by marketing the cultural margins through the references of Gods, cows and traditional beliefs. She highlights her marginalization as a female individual in the Tamil community by making her torn between several cultural identities.
The poem ‘The Ruined Gopuram’, shows the poet’s desire to assimilate to the Tamil culture where she is foreign to while reflecting her attempt on voicing for the marginalized Tamil community from a religious dimension. She employs cultural imagery and some specific words to exoticise the Tamil culture in order to show her desire to belong in the Tamil culture and build up her own identity as a part of that culture.
The way she describes women in Hindu culture, their attire, their rituals and their behavior shows the clashes she experiences. When moving between her own Burger-Catholic culture and the Tamil culture, she tries to negotiate herself about the space where she belongs to or her position within her culture as a result of the pressure to be assimilated into a foreign culture.
The trauma she results from her pressure to be assimilated into a foreign culture makes her culturally displaced in a hybrid space. This displacement is a key term that determines one’s identity and this shows how she defines herself in different socio-cultural spaces. Therefore, the self-defining process of her poetry is clearly visualized through her struggle to reclaim her identity as an individual in the Tamil community and as a community in the multi-cultural space in Sri Lanka.
Jean’s struggle to find her identity as a Sri Lankan who equally voices for all the races and ethnics in Sri Lanka against the identity politics are also visible in many of her poems. The poem ‘In the Month of July’ is an eye opener for the people about the internalization of certain discourses such as race and ethnicity that lead to violence resulting in people to build up different racial identities.
In a similar way “the pebbles grow too- into great stones and- rocks hurled with violence”, the small things matter and there can be destructive results at the end. Internalization of certain discourses since childhood causes them to carry the same negative and destructive idea till the end and she talks about how political leaders get power by demanding identity politics. To stop the repeatability of the violence in history, the poet invites the reader to take hands with her carrying the identity of Sri Lankan without labeling any race or religion.
In the poem ‘Apocalypse’, the poet shows the importance of not having identity markers and how these divisions can result in certain bad outcomes at the end. The whole poem is about the brutality of violence and it gives a comprehensive picture of what happened during the 1980’s. Jane criticizes the hegemonic politics in Sri Lanka who arouse anger and hate within the ethnicities by using her language aggressively. It is important to note that Jean has used general identity markers such as “Human, We, They, Man and corpses of husbands, wives and children” with the absence of ethnic markers.
The concept of ‘disimagining’ by Ilaine Scarry, can be clearly identified in this poem. She uses this intentionally just to make the reader understand the pain and sorrow of the other human beings despite their ethnic and religious identities. In this way, the poet highlights the importance of disregarding the ethnic identities and promotes the people to carry the identity of human beings.
Therefore, cultural and political identity has always become the subject matter of her writings. Her cultural trauma, torn cultural identity and the negotiation between cultures and within herself is clearly manifested in her poetry. At the same time, her attempt at building up the political identity as a responsible citizen by promoting the idea that identifying citizens as the nation through her poetry, especially after the ethnic riots that happened in the 1980s is also a significant feature in her poetry. Hence, finding her own identity as a marginalized poet is the problem she has and by articulating her trauma of being an outsider in her own motherland, helps her to build up her identity as a Sri Lankan, female poet with multiple heritages.