In Defence of the Real: The ‘Pathology’ of Violence in Buddhist Folk Rituals and Statecraft of Sri Lanka: A Psychoanalytic Review

Abstract

According to Slavoj Zizek, ‘Real’ is the world before it is carved up by the Symbolic. The Symbolic is the big Other that distorts/represses the Real. Fantasy is the mask that covers up this distortion and makes people of necessity live with repressed or sublimated forms of pleasure in different versions of the Symbolic. The discontent that issues from this inhibition constitutes psychic trauma and manifests in clash of denominational and racist fantasies. In this article, I attempt a Lacanaian-Zizekian analysis of the traumatic that inflects the subject positions in violent Buddhist state politics of Sri Lanka and seek to trace its continuity in the (anti)-ethics of Sinhala Buddhist folk rituals practised in the southern (low) part of the country. The psychodynamics of violence that engender the political engagement of the state, the JVP and the LTTE in the 1980s are not dissimilar from that of the sacrificial violence of Buddhist exorcism rituals in vogue in parts of Sri Lanka today. This is a fresh attempt to understand why violence becomes ‘unavoidable’ even in denominational identities that otherwise preach ahimsa (non-violence), and in statecraft that professes to be governed by such principles.