I used to believe that reading PhD dissertations should be done “rarely and reluctantly,/ under unbearable duress,” as Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz recommends in the context of writing poetry. I have revised my opinion on the subject after reading some research dissertations and book publications that have arisen out of them—the last one in the line being Thamizhachi Thangapandian’s Island to Island: The Voice of Sri Lankan Australian Playwright, Ernest Thalayasingham Macintyre (Emerland Publishers, 2013).
To someone who picks it up casually, the work might seem very esoteric. Not only has Sumathy aka Thamizhachi chosen to focus on a writer from the Sri Lankan diaspora in Australia, in contrast to some familiarity that exists with writers of Sri Lankan origin from North America and Europe, she has also chosen a playwright when fiction and poetry have largely been the focus of studies on Sri Lankan diasporic literature so far. But a closer look will show that the book is for anyone interested in questions of identity, displacement and performance. It is also for all those who have a piece of their heart in Sri Lanka for whatever reason, to try to see what kind of understanding and engagement are possible from distance, to see what has been possible for Ernest Thalayasingham Macintyre.
There is much impatience these days for any talk of diasporic nostalgia or even postcolonial studies. Slavoj Zizek recently called the latter a pseudo-discipline invented by Third World scholars in Western academia. Thamizhachi Thangapandian’s work seems to steer clear of re-enshrining diasporic nostalgia as a central literary experience, and focuses instead on how Ernest Macintyre manages to deploy his tools as a playwright to sustain tensions between questions of ethnic and racial identities and a general humanist empathy, between assimilation and critique, between seriousness and comedy which acknowledges that “all our tragedies are interwoven with all kinds of relief going on,” as the playwright has observed in a personal interview with Sumathy.
Thamizhachi Thangapandian’s discussion of Macintyre’s 1981 play Let’s Give Them Curry or Dark Dinkum Aussies is a fine example of her simultaneous engagement with her many texts. the text of the play; the background of political theatre both in Sri Lanka and Australia; the historical backdrop of migration of Sri Lankans to Australia; and the varied aspirations and frustrations of the different ethnic groups from Sri Lanka settled in Australia. As early as 1981, Ernest Macintyre moved beyond merely using the emotional currency of diasporic longing to ground his play and, instead made his primary work a critique of the emerging notions of multiculturalism in Australia at that time. The focus shifts to the younger generation who have more than questions of ‘Sri Lankan-ness’ and ‘Australian-ness’ to deal with. They have a new ‘multi-ness’ to grapple with, to invent and inhabit, and Macintyre shows how this work is not the exclusive burden of the children of migrants, but also of other younger Australians who had until then a more secure sense of home, a much clearer sense of who belongs and who arrived, about
the country. Thamizhachi Thangapandian captures the nitty-gritty of the aspects of Macintrye’s work very carefully and continuously shows how theatre — live performance by bodies that are racially, ethnically and generationally marked; and enunciation of lines in accents that carry the stamp not only of place and time but also of journeys—becomes the best medium for Macintyre to explore his very subtle questions that refuse easy and quick position-taking; that reject political correctness. In a rare and touching gesture of reciprocity, Macintrye, in his foreword to Thamizhachi Thangapandian’s book, suggests that her research on his work might in turn be of inspiration and guidance to him. He says, “Her valuable work over my living body may possibly set my course in other directions, searching myself.”