Friday Forum aligns with Rights Now, Collective for Democracy, an NGO that acts as a front for a Fascist and anti-feminist political group

from Samajavichara facebook page

Friday Forum which describes itself as a “gathering of public spirited persons who are dedicated to promoting peace and development in Sri Lanka within a framework of democracy, social justice and pluralism” has aligned with an NGO named Rights Now, Collective for Democracy which acts as a front for a political group known as the Sri Lanka Vanguard Party (Sri Lanka Peratugami Pakshaya) which follows a fascist and anti-feminist agenda.

This new alliance has come to light with Samabima, the Sinhala monthly magazine published by the Rights Now, Collective for Democracy in its Febraury 2014 issue carrying a special four page supplement under the title Friday Forum in which it carries in full a recent statement by the Friday Forum. The supplement is presented as an official publication of the Friday Forum with its contact details and the list of names of Firday Forum’s currently active members given as follows: Dr. Jayantha Dhanapala, Professor Savitri Goonesekere, Dr. G. Uswatte Aratchi, Professor. Camena Gunaratne , Ms. Suriya Wickremasinghe, Rt. Reverend Duleep de Chickera, Professor Arjuna Aluwihare, Mr. Ahilan Kadirgamar, Mr. J.C. Weliamuna, Dr. A. C. Visvalingam, Ms. Anne Abayasekara Mr. Tissa Jayatilaka, Radhika Coomaraswamy, Rev. Dr. Jayasiri Peiris, Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne, , Dr. U. Pethiyagoda Prof. Gananath Obeysekera Mr. Danesh Casie Chetty, Professor. Ranjini Obeyesekere, Dr. Deepika Udagama, Ms. Sithie Tiruchelvam, Ms, Damaris Wickramasekera, Dr. Selvy Thiruchandran, Faiz Ur-Chandran, Ms. Manouri Muttetuwegama, Ms. Shanthi Dias, Javed Usuf and Mr. Chandra Jayaratne.

Sri Lanka Vanguard Party, formerly named X Group is well known for its vituperative attacks against members of civil society with the detrimental effect of silencing independent minds among the youth. It has also taken an anti-feminist stand in persistently and viciously attacking in a sexist manner female members of civil society whom they consider their political enemies. For example, the Sri Lanka Vanguard Party, on their web pages has been hounding for a long time a senior female academic mounting a massive and continuing sexist attack against her dragging her personal life into public discussion because she has been critical of authoritarian politics of Sri Lanka Vanguard Party/ X Group.

Leader of the Rights Now who appear in public as a civil rights activist has been a long standing leading member of the Sri Lanka Vanguard Party/ X Group and the Rights Now, Collective for Democracy which is known to be funded by the European Union among other international donors is seen to channeling the NGO funds to Sri Lanka Vanguard Party. The leader of the Sri Lanka Vanguard Party and a team of party cadres lead the training of young interns recruited to Rights Now via its internship programme mainly offered to young school leavers and undergraduates which functions as a front for recruiting cadres to the Sri Lanka Vanguard Party. Sama Bima the monthly Sinhala publication of Rights Now which also publishes weekly in a full page advertisement in the Ravaya Sinhala newspaper is the Sinhala publicity arm of the Rights Now, Collective for Democracy. It is by making Samabima their official publicity provider in Sinahala that the Friday forum has aligned with the Rights Now, Collective for Democracy.

Are the members of the Friday Forum aware of the far reaching implications of Friday Forum linking up with the NGO, Rights Now, Collective for Democracy? Are Friday Forum funds channeled to Rights Now, Collective for Democracy? Members of the public who have come to appreciate the work of Friday Forum would like to know the response of the Friday Forum to these questions.

How Deepthi learnt about Derrida from Dr. Nalin Swaris

Extracts from a letter Dr. Nlain Swaris wrote to a university academic at Peradeniya in 2004

Five years ago I conducted a five hour long workshop on post structuralism and Derrida for the Sinhala Paravada crowd. Deepthi and Rohan Perera among others were present. Deepthi then paid homage to me in Mathota with “Ape jivithaye uthkrustama guruvaraya vana Nalin Swaris” until things got sour………………..

A young man of SSA called Samantha taped my talk made a draft transcript and posted it to Holland for my correction. He and Deepthi were to edit and publish in Sinhala Pravadaya. . One section was. The second was still in typed manuscript form.

Deepthi positions himself as the sane one by differentiating himself from the others as the ‘hysterical’.Whereas Freud insisted that every psychonalyst must undergo analysis first before beginning his/her practice and that this should repeated periodically. He subjected himself to analysis. Deepthi speaks of Derrida and Lacan in the same breath, not having grasped Derrida’s sharp criticism of Lacan in polemical exchanges such as Positions and Facteur d la verite but specially in his essay on Differance in MARGES la Philosophie. He clarifies that Difference “exceeds the order of truth without dissimulating itself as a something, a mysterious in the occult of non – or in a hole with indeterminable borders (for example) in hole with indeterminable borders ( example in a topology of castration) “ou dans un trou don les bordures determinable (par example en une topologie de la castration) Lacan bases his entire theory of hysteria on a the notion of the ‘lack’as an ontic lack. All humans experience a lack of being (manqué a etre) which they desire to be filled by an other (‘objet petit o) and an Other Objet Grand O) this time capitalized, which can never be fulfilled. Thus man is doomed to be unfulfilled during his mortal life. (The Budddha destroyed Desire in the life and in this body ( Rohitha Sutra) . He handed down the prescription for it. Following Nietszche, I have called the Eightfold Path a Therapeutic Ethic.

Derrida’s critique is that Lacan, the Jesuit educated Roman Catholic has slipped into a negative theology (context of onto-theology!). Lacan writes “Le desir de l’homme est le desire de l’ Autre. Desire of man is desire for the Other (capitalized). The Wholly Other in Christian theology being God. Lacan says humans experience a fundamental lack of being – manque a etre. Having concluded that the vagina is the place of castration – Derrida says Lacan transfer this lack into a transcendendal principle. To quote Derrida “Lacan’s toplogy of castration – ‘a hole with determinable borders’ repeats the metaphysical gesture – albeit a negative one – of making absence, the lack, the hole, a transcendental principle that can be pinned down as such, and can thereby govern a theoretical discourse”. Moreover Lacan introduced the concept Name of the Father for the symbolic order – Language. French Catholics cross themselves dans le Nom du Pere. “In the Name of the Father, son and Holy Ghost”. So this too is a Christian theology derived concept. And logoceentric in Derridian terms because ‘God the Father’ produced his Son, the Word or Logos out of this mouth!. “In the beginning was the Word (Logos). And the word was God. All things were made by the Word” opening lines of St. Johns Gospel. …….. The idea that there is an infinite desire which cannot be fulfilled on earth but only through union with God au fond des choses thoroughly – theological. ……. Moreover the central place that Lacan assigns to hysteria and the vagina as the topos of castration was severely critcised by French feminists notably Luce Iragaray. Lacan who was himself expelled and founded his own Institute then expelled Iragary from his! See how difficult it is for some men to accept criticism. They become hysterical in the common clinical sense and not in the Deepthian (non) sense. The Dutch have a phallogocentric expression for such men “in de pik getrapt” – kicked on their pricks.

from the archives of Dr. Nlain Swaris’ correspondence……………………………….

 

………….>

The Imaginary and Deepthi’s DEMAND for Recognition and Love

The Deepthi Reader (Blackwell Readers)
(Also known as the Zizek Reader)
Translated and Edited by Slavoj Zizek

Paperback: 392 pages; Dim (inches): 1.11 x 9.00 x 6.02
Publisher: Blackwell Publishers; ISBN: 0631212019; (April 1999)

Panadura Banda goes to London town

Professor Deepthi of Landon School of Hysteria at the Internet Web University of Ratmalana, also known as the Giant of Panadura Suburban insecurity and inferiority has risen to international stature with the world renown Lacanian interpreter Slavoj Zizek known as the giant of Ljubljana choosing to translate and edit a collection of writings by Prof. Deepthi which include his contributions to the understanding of hys –(own)- teria, and Lack-anian interpretation of popular culture which has mesmerized a Sinhala only readership of hapless adolescents for close to half a decade now. His work is an extraordinary mix of extracts from the leading Internet sites on all leading Western Post-ies including Derrida and Lacan, seasoned with Zizekian analysis of popular culture via Lacan.

This is the second international publication of Prof. Deepthi’s writings, the first being his celebrated essays on Art in Sinhala which the pirates (shame on them!) on the Internet have published in Translation under their own names. (Anyone could verify this fact by translating into English the titles of Prof. Deepthi’s essays in his book and checking the sites on the Net where such headings appear).

The Deepthi Reader – which includes a preface by Zizek and a new, previously unpublished essay on leaving Las Vegas, and also the much acclaimed previously published essays on Hysteria, and Courtly Love or Woman as Thing – provides, typically in his inimitable style, a yet another incomprehensible and inaccessible introduction to the showy character of a future whose terrible flaw is in his fixation on the Imaginary….. the worst intellectual low since Anti-Rohan parricide.

Zizek has said that with this translation a huge Lack-una in the English literature is created for the first time thus equating the English readership with the Sinhala only readership of Prof. Deepthi.

The collection include the translations of some of Prof. Deepthi’s world famous, key research papers (published in the Sinhala tabloid London), such as,

1. “Perumpuran Adaraye sita Andana Kreedawa Dakwa”
Translated in full into English as “Courtly Love or Woman as Thing’ (which first appeared in this translated form in an earlier book also edited by Zizek, titled The Metastases of Enjoyment.) The translation of the title of the film from Sinhala “Andana Kreedawa” to English “Crying Game” has left many a commentator utterly puzzled as the characters of the film depicted more as “game” in the sense of hunted animals, rather than those who negated in a “kreedawa” or a “game”.

2. A Lacanian reading of Mike Figgis film Leaving Las Vegas

3. A Lacanian reading of Dead Men Walking

Zizek has also already translated into English in this reader, many of Prof. Deepthi’s yet to be written film reviews in Sinhala, and his interpretations of the future writings of Lacan yet to come, thus amply illustrating Zizek’s Lacanian hysterical ability to travel between past and future. (A list of such future writings of Prof. Deepthi, taken from the Index pages of Zizek/Deepthi Reader is appended below).

An Amazon reviewer says about Deepthi and his “work”:

In his preface and his original contributions to the selections in this Reader, Prof. Deepthi offers a statement of his position as clear as mud as always than in any of his other books culled from the internet and secondary texts.

He acknowledges post-structuralism’s accent on post-structures or gossip that titillates the vulgar and uncivilized dark side of human mind (hence known in Sinhala as ‘paschath-bhagayan”, or the asses) serialized in the highly un-civilized Sinhala political tabloid London, (that beats all the London tabloids) named after that bastion of most uncivilized imperialist conservative right wing politics. He quite uncharacteristically acknowledges the limitations of accenting the role played by his imagination fixated on sexual fantasy exclusively dominated by anorexic young white women originating from a deep rooted sense of fetishism, a Rohanian-Lack. Hence the role ‘sex as ideology’ play in his psychic and social life to accommodate which he has developed an elaborate theory perverting the slogan ‘Personal/Sex is Political’.

The ecstasy and danger of iconoclasm of Deepthi Kumara Gunaratne

by Ajith Samaranayake

I was pleasantly surprised to find a translated summary of this column which was titled ‘The sad lumpenisation of the bourgeoisie’ appearing in the December issue of ‘Balaya’ a publication of ‘Ravaya.’ In choosing a name for this monthly magazine Managing Editor Victor Ivan has obviously gone to the heart of the matter. Balaya after all means power and nothing is possible, whether for the good or ill, without (political) power.

If politics is the art of the possible power is the engine of politics. Not for Ivan the cosy, literary-sounding magazine nomenclatures. He believes in exposing the entrails of contemporary politics and exhibiting the nature of power in its many facets.

‘Balaya’ is a somewhat heavy-weight affair and this comes naturally to a publication which obviously sees itself as the natural heir to a tradition of intellectual-academic journalism originating with the ‘Sanskruthi’ in the 1950s and continuing into the 1970-90s with ‘Mavatha.’ While the former was more literary and aesthetic the latter was more pronouncedly political but what the demise of both (although ‘Sanskruthi’ has now been revived by S. G. Samarasinghe) testify to is the lack of resources and the lack of a large enough literate readership to sustain such a venture.

High Culture and Popular Culture

‘Balaya’ has cast its net wide refusing to be circumscribed either by political or literary-aesthetic considerations and its December issue ranges from essays on ragging in universities to a studied exposition of the thinking of Hannah Arendt by Kumudu Kusum Kumara, from a discussion on photography between Ralex Ranasinghe and Padmakumara Mettasena (representing two generations and two schools) to criticisms of fiction and the cinema.

The Deepthi Reader ( also known as the Zizek reader)

The leaflet titled “The Deepthi Reader ( also known as the Zizek reader)” which is reproduced below is a piece consisting of part satire and part analysis written anonymously and circulated in 2003 in response to the “politics” of the X Group in Sri Lanka led by Deepthi Kumara Gunaratne the political strategy of which was to attack leading civil society individuals by publicly “exposing” what were claimed to be details of their private lives.

Those who produced this pamphlet also produced a Sinhala version of it (which we carry separately on this site) and claimed that they would be setting up a site called X Files in response to the “politics” of this X Group. For some reason the site X Files did not materialise.

The X Group disbanded itself on the day of the 2004 Tsunami and it is said that out of 145 members who constituted the group about 140 left its leader Deepthi Kumara Gunaratne in critique of his politics.

However, today Deepthi Kumara Gunaratne continues his politics of exposing the private lives of civil society individuals and in this endeavour he is supported by civil society groups such as Rights Now which claims to be a human rights initiative which publishes Samabima a Sinhala monthly magazine and employs Deepthi Kumara Gunaratne as a key resource person in its various activities.

Ten (10) years after the initial publication of these original documents that are reproduced here by the ‘X Files,’ we borrow the name ‘X Files’ to launch this site which will serve basically as a repository of critiques of the X Group and its successor Sri Lanka Vanguard Party whose leader is Deepthi Kumara Gunaratne , and various splinter groups of the former X Group which continue to follow the same political strategy of Deepthi Kumara Gunaratne