Professional and professor, in that order – A. J. G., the film and drama critic of the Big House by the lake. Beiragedera, before the respected done in the groves of academe. And quite Americansied, not quite the standard English lit-critic pedagogue. He had been ‘Americansied.’ Look who’s talking ? he inquired ... remember “THE GREAT GATSBY?”.

Yes, I had discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald in a neglected corner of the Peradeniya campus library, and written a series on Hemingway, Robert Faulkner, Robert Frost et al to the press. And now the Newspaper Publishers Society had asked us to prepare a training program. A. J. didn’t like the word, ‘training’. “Upgrading skills.’ suggested the perfectionist in the professor. I yielded ground. It was to be my last visit to hospital, two days before his death... THE ICEMAN COMETH.

And now he’s gone, leaving many of us, publishers, editors and journalists most of all, with a debt of honour. Cap-and gown or not, A. J. was a scholar., though not a campus ‘Mass Communications’ pothay guru. The reader, the consumer. The market is the ultimate master. In an article published by the LANKA GUARDIAN., he observed.

“Commitment to the fee market philosophy and the commercial ethic does not signify a rejection of no-commercial broadcasting. The cultural importance and the countervailing value of no-commercial broadcasting, whether as information, education or entertainment, are universally acknowledged in this regard. The USA furnishes one model; Britain and Japan another. To put it in a nut-shell, electronic media consumers in Sri Lanka do not get a fair deal; they are regularly short-changed. As paying customers, they have certain legitimate expectations.”

He did take me by surprise later. “You and I came straight from campus, right? We were thrilled by the romance of journalism. We were fairly well-paid. What is the salary of a reporter or sub-editor in a reputed paper. I know, I know, you are going to talk to me about trade unions, negotiations, collective bargaining etc. etc. No. We should have something in our report on salary scales. The profession must attract the brighter products of Peradeniya, Colombo etc. At least we must request the publishers and the editors to study the matter since it is a problem which involves their interests too. So raising standards and raising salaries should be studied by the same team, committee or whatever...”

An English Department product, he left the Bard to have the last word.

“He gave the little wealth he had
to build a House for fools and Mad
and showed by one satiric touch
No nations needed it so much.”

Jonathan Swift, I believe.

The propaganda mills of the LTTE are working overtime right now. The projection is all about the fall of Kilinochchi. All kudos for the feat is being attributed to the tiger supremo Velupillai Prabakharan who according to LTTE publicists planned and executed Oyatha Alaigal-2 or Unceasing Waves-2. He is also supposed to have entered Kilinochchi in a triumphant cavalcade and raised the LTTE flag ceremonially. While all the hype is around Kilinochchi there is practically no mention about another place in the Wanni namely Mankulam. Suddenly Mankulam has seemingly ceased to exist in the LTTE scheme of things.

The past eleven months however saw the LTTE media, constantly harp on Mankulam and its supposed invincibility. The fact that the army was trying for more than ten months to enter Mankulam and in that context its perceived inability to do so created an aura around the word Mankulam. The LTTE exploited this fact to the maximum. But suddenly with the army entering Mankulam that bubble broke. So the LTTE simply ignores Mankulam and focuses instead on what could be termed its achievement in Kilinochchi. Had the LTTE not won Kilinochchi it would have lost a lot of prestige over the loss of Mankulam. It is even possible that the LTTE vacated its tenuous position in Mankulam in the aftermath of Kilinochchi because it could then justify the loss of one by the gain of the other.

If tiger propagandists abroad are crowing about Kilinochchi and maintaining a deafening silence on Mankulam the government propagandists in Sri Lanka are acting as mirror images of them. Here the emphasis is about the capture of Mankulam. The debacle at Kilinochchi is being glossed over. The government propaganda machinery is straining itself to promote the victory of Mankulam. The hoisting of the lion flag in the vicinity of the Mankulam railway station, a view of the post office, some shops and the quadrangular junction etc have been telecast. This has helped dispel the doubts of clouting Thomases whether the army had indeed taken Mankulam. Sri Lankans also had the pleasure of seeing Anuruddha Ratwatte mounting a tank while addressing the soldiers at Mankulam. That sight was refreshingly different to the earlier one of seeing him astride his steed like Lochinwar.

With all due respect to the army the reasons for the scepticism was because the news about Mankulam falling was virtually Manna from heaven to the government. It has been possible for the government to tide over the loss of Kilinohchi because of the capture of Mankulam. It was of an immense damage control value. It was only some time ago that the government postponed Provincial council elections on the ground. That the war was entering a crucial phase and decisive stage.

Opposition leader Ranil Wickremasinghe himself referred to this in a roundabout way and indirectly queried whether this was the critical stage in his statement on the Kilinochchi situation. Wickrema-singhe could not be brutally blunt on the issue as he could not risk the armed forces. Again in fairness to the army it was not that institution which said the war had entered a critical stage. But the bombastic pronouncements of Ratwatte affect the army by extension. At the same time Ratwatte gets away with many things because people respect the sacrifices of the soldiers and do not want to hurt them because of Ratwatte’s actions.

In that context no one could be faulted about not believing government claims that Mankulam had been captured because it came in the heels of the Kilinochchi debacle. The government too is maximising on that development. As is usual the state controlled media is really going to town on that. In the process the element of overkill is very much visible. When Jaffna was taken in 1995 the flag hoisting ceremony took place. The modalities of that event were orchestrated in a spirit of conquest rather than a spirit of reconciliation. The impression created was not that of re-taking ones’ own territory but capturing alien territory. But there was some attempt at assuaging Tamil sentiment by getting a retired government servant Ramalingam to hoist the Nandhi or crouched bull flag. The Nandhi was the flag of the Jaffna kingdom of Sankili. It was also the district emblem. But Ramalingam himself paid the supreme penalty for this act and was shot dead by the tigers.

In spite of the Nandhi hoisting ceremony what took place next was particularly hurtful to Tamils. A medieval type of ritual was enacted where Ratwatte presented a deed in casket to Kumaratunga signifying that “Yapa Patuna” had been captured. Instead of using the word Jaffna or Yarlpanam or Yapanaya the word in vogue during the time of Senbaka Perumal or Sapumal Kumaraya was used to denote Jaffna. The whole exercise was meaningless except for “ego massaging” people imagining themselves to be warrior heroes eulogised in history. It was Sapumal with Malabar ancestry who conquered the Wanni first and Jaffna next. Later he reigned in Nallur and Kotte as Buwanekabhahu. A Swedish academic Peter Schalk propounded an interesting theory about the Sapumal Kumaraya consciousness in contemporary Sri Lanka.

Sometime later ‘Operation Edibala’ was launched and the Stretch of road between Vavuniya and Mannar was captured by the armed forces. A key junction village on this road was Parayanalan Kulam. A Police station was set up here and Ratwatte himself conducted the opening ceremony. A larger than life sized cardboard cut out figure of Ratwatte was seen outside the station. At the same time Tamil opinion was shocked by the re-naming of Parayanalankulam as Sapumalpura. After a lot of agitation it was announced that there was no change of Parayanalankulam as Sapumalpura. Ratwatte himself said that he was not aware of the name being changed in the first place.

All these attempts at staging medieval type “conquest” ceremonies and changing names were symptomatic of a mindset that thought nothing of offending Tamil sentiment. It also displayed a dangerous arrogance that bode no good for harmonious ethnic relations let alone reconciliation in the future. One tactic by the LTTE in appealing to Tamil sentiment was to portray the Sri Lankan army as an alien oppressive force bent on conquering and suppressing the Tamils. The ill-advised attempts at conducting ceremonies and changing place names was akin to playing straight into LTTE hands.

With all the hype about Jaffna in 1995 - 96 the situation there is pretty bleak. As a visiting US State Dept. delegation pointed out the government missed a golden opportunity in making a showcase out of Jaffna and demonstrating its bona fide intentions to the Tamil people. Then the local authority elections in Jaffna provided another opportunity. Again the PA Government failed to, capitalise on the situation. Nothing constructive in meaningful terms was achieved.

On a national scale the devolution package was published. The government gained politically on a national and international scale as a result of it. There was also operation Jayasikurui aimed at weakening and marginalising the LTTE to a point of ineffectiveness. Contrary to government expectations the tiger displayed amazing resilience and put up a very stiff fight. The operation that began in May 1997 kept dragging on. Every place gained by the army like Omanthai, Puliyankulam, Nedunkerny, Periyamadhu, Kanagarayan kulam. Olumadhu etc. were, projected as places of strategic importance and value. Mankulam too was portrayed in the same vein.

But Mankulam however was not that simple to take. The LTTE put up determined resistance that enabled it to hold on to it for nearly a year. The army fighting to deadlines set up according to political timetables was under great pressure. Both the armed forces as well as the LTTE suffered many casualties and the A-9 highway itself became known as the highway of death. As time went on Mankulam itself became a symbol. To the LTTE it was a symbol of resistance and defiance. To the army it was a challenge and a mission. As human sacrifices kept mounting on either side the value attached to Mankulam increased. In the process Mankulam itself became mythologised.

In that sense the capture of Mankulam is certainly of great symbolic value to the army. Although it is being touted as being of great strategic value that itself is an exaggeration unless and until the army captures, consolidates and controls all access roads connected to Mankulam in particular and the Jaffna - Kandy road in general. Given the past history of the Jaffna triumph it is important to assess what lies in the immediate future instead of whipping up a frenzy about the real and imaginary advantages accruing to the armed forces as a result of the fall of Mankulam.

What is happening now however is that the people of this country are once again being lulled into a sense of false consciousness about the importance of Mankulam. The loss of Kilinochchi is being glossed over temporarily. Earlier when Kilinochi was captured after Operation Sathjaya the country was regaled with analyses of how important Kilinochchi was. If and when the armed forces re-capture Kilinochchi then once again we will all be enlightened about the strategic importance of Kilinochchi. Presently however there a lot of hot air is going to be blow about Mankulam.

The on going censorship inhibits a free and frank analysis of the real military situation prevailing in the north. If it were possible to write in detail about what exactly happened in Paranthan and Kilinochchi during the LTTE’s Operation Unceasing Waves it would illuminate the people living in the South and help them arrive at rational choices about resolving the ethnic crisis. But although the Tamil expatriate knows about the Kilinochchi reality the people in Sri Lanka are deprived of that opportunity.

So in view of the censorship this column is compelled to touch on an area that does not fall under its purview. Since the stated rationale behind the censorship is preventing the enemy obtaining military intelligence through newspaper reports this column would refrain from writing anything about military activity. Instead it would focus briefly on what kind of defences have been prepared by the LITE beyond Mankulam. (Interestingly is it a coincidence that the LTTE accomplishes its spectacular military feats when it is deprived of military intelligence as a result of the censorship?)

Although central Mankulam which in effect is the town has been captured there are some other areas north of the point where the flag was hoisted that have to be captured. Official press releases have stated that the tigers are keeping up a barrage of artillery fire. This indicates the quality of resistance to be proffered by the LTTE in the future.

The LITE has also constructed a chain of defence posts from Oddusuddan in the east to Vavunikulam in the West. This defence ‘fence’ is around 40 kilometres in length and comprises bunkers, trenches and pill boxes etc. There is also the special artillery squad named after Kittu that is manning this defence line under former Mannar and Jaffna commander Bhanu. Moreover the stretch of Jungle between Mankulam and Murigandy to the north is also very dense and conducive to the type of warfare practiced by the tigers between Puliyankulam and Mankulam.

Thus it is important for the people of this country to know the reality of the situation and not be carried away by fanciful expectations of an easy victory because the mythical Mankulam has fallen.

Also it is useful to realise that Mankulam is perhaps the most valuable piece of real estate anywhere in the world. The PA government has spent nearly 60 billion rupees for the war this year if one takes into account the supplementary estimates and 800 million raised by the defence levy. The only territorial gain made in the war so far this year is Mankulam thereby enhancing its value as a piece of real estate.

The more important fact to be aware of by all those who are likely to hear increased hyperbole about Mankulam is to learn the lesson of Kilinochchi. That operation has shown that even if the entire A-9 highway is captured by the army the possibility of another Kilinochchi debacle is quite likely. In fact the greater the territory captured the greater the vulnerability of military institutions with diluted strength. So it is better for the nation to learn how to de-mystify itself of the Mankulam myth and gear itself up to face some more dismal prospects in the future.

The United Nations has passed several resolutions and declarations that are relevant to Tamil separatism. A selection of these are given here.

1. In its Resolution 1514 (XV) of 14. December 1960, the General Assembly of the United Nations stressed the need to bring colonialism to a speedy end. It adopted the ‘’Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples’’. This declaration opposed the subjugation of people to alien domination, through colonialism. It declared that all peoples had a right to self determination. That immediate steps should be taken to transfer power to the people in non-self governing territories. But it ended with the proviso:

‘’Any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.’’

2. In its Resolution 2625 (XXV) of 24 October 1970, the General Assembly adopted and proclaimed the ‘’Declaration of Principles of International Law concerning friendly relations and cooperation among the states.’’ It further declared that the principles embodied in the resolution ‘’constituted basic principles of international law,’’ These principles were already in the United Nations Charter. (United Nations action in the field of human rights’’, 1994. p 248)

This resolution affirmed the principle of equal rights and the self-determination of peoples. It declared that states were to actively promote ‘friendly relations and cooperation among states’’ and to assist in the disappearance of colonialism. If recognised the ‘establishment of a sovereign and independent state, the free association or integration with an independent state or the emergence into any other political status freely determined by a people constitute modes of implementing the right of self-determination by that people’’.

However, it also declared:

‘’Nothing in the foregoing paragraphs shall be construed as authorising or encouraging any action which would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent states conducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights...and possessed of a government representing the whole people belonging to the territory without distinction as to race, creed or colour. Every state shall refrain from any action aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and territorial integrity of any other state or country.’’

3. We now look at a Resolution made by the United Nations Human Rights Committee at its 46th session, 1996. Its General Recommendation No XXI states:

‘’The Committee notes that ethnic or religious groups or minorities frequently refer to the right to self-determination as a basis for an alleged right to secession. In this connection the Committee wishes to express the following views.

‘’The right to self-determination of peoples is a fundamental principle of international law. It is enshrined in article 1 of the Charter of the United Nations, in article 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as in other international human rights instruments. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides for the rights of peoples to self-determination besides the right of ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion or to use their own language.

‘’The Committee emphasizes that in accordance with the declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, approved by the United Nations General Assembly in its resolution 2625 (XXV) of 24 October 1970, it is duty of States to promote the right to self-determination of peoples. But the implementation of the principle of self-determination requires every State to promote, through joint and separate action, Universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedom in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. In this context the Committee draws the attention of Governments to the declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, adopted by the General Assembly in its resolution 47/135 of 18 December 1992.

‘’In respect of the self-determination of peoples two aspects have to be distinguished. The right to self-determination of peoples has an internal aspect, that is to say, the rights of all peoples to pursue freely their economic, social and cultural development without outside interference. In that respect there exists a link with the right of every citizen to take part in the conduct of public affairs at any level, as referred to in article 5 (c) of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. In consequence, Governments are to represent the whole population without distinction as to race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin. The external aspect of self-determination implies that all peoples have the right to determine freely their political status and their place in the international community based upon the principle of equal rights and exemplified by the liberation of peoples from colonialism and by the prohibition to subject peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation.

‘’In order to respect fully the rights of all peoples within a State, Governments are again called upon to adhere to and implement fully the international human rights instruments and in particular the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Concern for the protection of individual rights without discrimination on racial, ethnic, tribal, religious or other grounds must guide the policies of Governments. In accordance with article 2 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and other relevant international documents, Governments should be sensitive towards the rights of persons belonging to ethnic groups, particularly their right to lead lives of dignity, to preserve their culture, to share equitably in the fruits of national growth and to play their part in the Government of the country of which they are citizens. Also, Governments should consider, within their respective constitutional frameworks, vesting persons belonging to ethnic or linguistic groups comprised of their citizens, where appropriate, with the right to engage in activities which are particularly relevant to the preservation of the identity of such persons or groups.

‘’The Committee emphasizes that, in accordance with the declaration on Friendly Relations, none of the Committee’s actions shall be construed as authorizing or encouraging any action which would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent States conducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples and possessing a Government representing the whole people belonging to the territory, without distinction as to race, creed or colour. In the view of the Committee, international law has not recognized a general right of peoples unilaterally to declare secession from a State. In this respect, the Committee follows the views expressed in An Agenda for Peace (paras. 17 and following), namely, that a fragmentation of States may be detrimental to the protection of human rights, as well as to the preservation of peace and security. This does not, however, exclude the possibility of arrangements reached by free agreements of all parties concerned.’’ (International Human Rights Reports Vol 5(1) 1998 p 20.

4. At the same annual session, the UN Human Rights Committee also passed General Recommendation No XXII, 1996. This stated, among other things that the Resolution emphasised the following:

‘’All refugees and displayed persons have the right to freely return to their homes of origin and under conditions of safety.

‘’All such refugees and displaced persons have, after their return to their homes of origin, the right to have restored to them property of which they were deprived in the course of the conflict and to be compensated for property that cannot be restored.’’ (International Human Rights Reports. Vol 5(1) 1998 p 21).

This Recommendation is useful for the rehabilitation of the Sinhalese and Muslims residents expelled from the North and East, in an attempt at ethnic cleansing.

5. These resolutions have repeatedly referred to two United nations Declarations. It is helpful for the Sri Lankan public to know the contents of these two declarations.

First here is the UN declaration on the Rights of persons belonging to national or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities’’ (1992). This is given below in full:

Article 1
1. States shall protect the existence and the national or ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity of minorities within their respective territories and shall encourage, conditions for the promotion of that identity.

2. States shall adopt appropriate legislative and other measures to achieve those ends.

Article 2
1. Persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities (hereinafter referred to as persons belonging to minorities) have the right to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, and to use their own language, in private and in public, freely and without interference or any form of discrimination.

2. Persons belonging to minorities have the right to participate effectively in cultural, religious, social, economic and public life.

3. Persons belonging to minorities have the right to participate effectively in decisions on the national and, where appropriate, regional level concerning the minority to which they belong or the regions in which they live, in a manner not incompatible with national legislation.

4. Persons belonging to minorities have the right to establish and maintain their own associations.

5. Persons belonging to minorities have the right to establish and maintain, without any discrimination, free and peaceful contacts with other members of their group and with persons belonging to other minorities, as well as contacts across frontiers with citizens of other States to whom they are related by national ethnic, religious or linguistic ties.

Article 3
1. Persons belonging to minorities may exercise their rights, including those set forth in the present Declaration, individually as well as in community with other members of their group, without any discrimination.

2. No disadvantage shall result for any person belonging to a minority as the consequence of the exercise or non-exercise of the rights set forth in the present declaration.

Article 4
1. States shall take measures where required to ensure that persons belonging to minorities may exercise fully and effectively all their human rights and fundamental freedoms without any discrimination and in full equality before the law.

2. States shall take measures to create favourable conditions to enable persons belonging to minorities to express their characteristics and to develop their culture, language, religion, traditions and customs, except where specific practices are in violation of national law and contrary to international standards.

3. States should take appropriate measures so that, wherever possible, persons belonging to minorities may have adequate opportunities to learn their mother tongue or to have instruction in their mother tongue.

4. States should, where appropriate, take measures in the field of education, in order to encourage knowledge of the history, traditions, language and culture of the minorities existing within their territory. Persons belonging to minorities should have adequate opportunities to gain knowledge of the society as a whole.

5. States should consider appropriate measures so that persons belonging to minorities may participate fully in the economic progress and development in their country.

(To be continued tomorrow)

From Beyond the Metaphysics of Common Sense, which will be launched at 4.30 pm on October 8 (Thursday) at the Institute of Pali and Buddhist Studies, Gower Road (Opposite Police Park), Colombo 5.

By Susantha Goonatilake
This paper addresses a central issue of the coming century brought about by changes in evolutionary systems, exemplified by the internal life of the cyborg. The purpose is to demonstrate that a meta-ethic, a meta subjectivity can be arrived at through the dynamics of evolutionary lineages, which has repercussions in approaching evolution as an internal process.

My incursion to the set of problems is by considering the coming merger of three evolutionary lineages whose communities. I had sketched in earlier discussion (Goonatilake 1993). These three evolutionary lineages are those of the genetic-biological, the cultural, and an incipient one in the case of adaptive computer systems. All three lineages deal with information, though not in the Shannon sense. It is information in the sense of the ability of each lineage (or sub branch of a lineage) to interact and deal with its environment.

Evolutionary Lineages

The evolutionary characteristics of the biological lineage are well known. It bifurcates into new species, sometimes there are sudden disjunctures due to punctuated equilibria, there is a phylogenetic ascendancy and the information is self organizing. The encoded information is also a window to the external world, having its own ‘subjectivity’ on the world, which change as the lineages course through time.

The second information lineage with evolutionary characteristics is that of human culture, which encodes another set of reaction to the external environment. It is also a means of responding and adapting to the environment. Like genetic information, it is passed down diachronically from generation to generation. The characteristics of these lineages have been described in detail by social scientists as to their adaptation, construction through historical encounters with the environment, transmissions down a lineage and collective subjectivities in the form of say class consciousness or orientation of a profession.

The most rigorous work in the cultural lineages has been in the social studies of one social group, scientists and their culture. Over the last two decades the mechanics, by which scientific knowledge is constructed though the operation of social factors has been described through what amount to an evolutionary epistemology of knowledge. In this formulation, the production of scientific knowledge is influenced by factors in the social environment as well from social factors within the social group doing science. These influences help push science in particular directions changing its content as well as the trajectory of the lineage. The lineage that results is a tree of knowledge which is parallel to the tree of genetic information and having many common characteristics with the latter.

These characteristics include speciation (in this case to disciplines and sub-disciplines), continuation of a core memory (in the form of the discipline’s core knowledge), a process of self construction (through the continuous social interaction between scientists), “subjectivity” attached to each lineage (in the form say of a profession’s or class’s particular view on the world), and sudden disjunctures in cognition in the form of changes in paradigms. To these two lineages is now being added an incipient lineage of information associated with computers (for a detailed treatment of these lineages see Goonatilake 1991). This lineage is only a few decades old but is growing rapidly as computer use grows exponentially. Through this process a lineage of ‘artifactual’ information that extends backwards and forwards through time is created.

This lineage also interacts with its external world, its environment, through its input and output devices. The lineage is tightly controlled at the moment, without much internal flexibility apart from that given by its human mentors, just like say insects are tightly controlled by their genetic programming. But new developments including those that use learning systems, genetic algorithms and neural networks allow the lineage to become more adaptive to the environment and so change its internal states in non trivial ways corresponding to changes in the environment.

This lineage grows initially according to the disciplinary boundaries and classification criteria set by human, but as the information stores within the lineage are increasingly exchanged and operated on by internally generated rules specially those set by learning systems, these boundaries begin to change according to new internal criteria. And so, new boundaries emerge in a process analogous to the formation of species.

This artifactual lineage is also self constructed through interactions with the environment. The lineages only samples its environment through the particular information fed to it. Hence its ‘view’ on the external world is a particular view, a particular ‘subjectivity’ that changes as the lineage changes its internal information system. It has been also observed that the lineage sometimes changes abruptly, apparently exhibiting evolutionary characteristics similar to punctuated equilibrium in biology (Huberman and Hogg 1988). So, the general evolutionary characteristics that we observed in the case of the other two lineages also appear in the artifactual lineage too.

Mergers
The three lineages are increasingly interacting with each other merging directly or indirectly their information streams. This is happening largely through biotechnology and information technology. One can give a brief overview of these mergings (for details see Goonatilake 1993).

Thus genetic machine information is operated upon by human actions through cultural information. Drawing from the sociological literature of the social construction of science one can easily demonstrate that cultural information in the form of scientific knowledge is mapped directly in machine information as programmes and data, and in genes through genetic engineering (ibid. pp. 78-82). On the other hand, machine information as computer output is mapped within cultural information as they are internalized by computer users. Genetic information is mapped on culture through the information processing techniques and limits of perception that biology gives to culture

For example we can subjectivity sample our environment only through particular genetic windows, we hear a different sound spectrum than would a dog or a bat. And, once these are changed through interventions in biology, our perceptions, and so some aspects of our culture change.

Current developments in the analysis, storage and eventual manipulation of gene sequences by computers as in the work associated with the Human Genome Project also results in direct transfers between the genetic and machine information realms. Nascent developments in biochips and biocomputers promise interactions from genes to machines.

The three lineages therefore are increasingly beginning to interact with each other and to merge directly or indirectly their information streams. This process merges the information content as well as their modes of processing resulting in changes in all three streams, the genetic, the artifactual and the cultural. The direct continuity of each lineage with its past is now broken, new ‘memories’ are added from outside a lineage. New mutant combinations arise that have different interactions with the environment. There are resultant changes in the evolutionary characteristics of the hybrid-whole that are interesting and which I have sketched elsewhere (Goonatilake 1993.).

But this hybridization of the lineages creates two sets of value and ethical questions. One of these questions relates to the identity created by the new interventions. The other to what ‘value’ orientation each of these hybrids should have. At the moment, in say genetic engineering’s infancy, one sees only the beginnings of such vexed questions. Yet, a precursor to the nature of the identity question is seen in the non genetic interventions that have already been made in reproductive technology and tissue transplants.

Such techniques as flushing of embryos, in-victor fertilization, sex preselection, surrogate motherhood, surrogate embryo transfer and cloning have raised a hornet’s nest of issues. Some of these interventions have seen confusion and dramatic reversal of biological and social kinships. For example, when a woman carries, in an act of surrogate motherhood, her own daughter’s child, as has already happened; the grandmother and mother become the same person, and the child’s identity is multiple-at the same time son, grand son, and stepfather (Curson 1993). In a reverse direction the identity of the parent can also be thrown into question. Thus who, for example is the parent of a child brought about by in-vitro fertilization from an egg donated by Mrs. A combined with a sperm from Mr. B. implanted in Mrs. C’s uterus and given for adoption to Mr. D. and Mrs. E.?

These very compliclated social and ethical issues will intensify when genetic characteristic themselves can be excised in or-out of chromosomes in the future. In such cases, possible parents could be spread over a large number of desirable gene donors, or for that matter, a computerized gene bank. In the extreme hypothetical example there could be a different donor each for a variety of genes standing respectively, for example for a nose, for an eye, for a set of teeth, for a particular type of intelligence, for avoiding a particular disease and so on. If one transfers genes from other organisms (the gene for preventing disease could even be from another species—a transgenic source as has happened already in the plant field). ‘Parentage’ then is a very complicated affair. In the ultimate meaning in the next few decades—it becomes an unsolvable affair within current discourse.

(To be continued tomorrow)

MORE.