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Papers by Chitra Jayathilake
Critical Inquiry in Language Studies
Computer Assisted Language Learning
Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée, 2019
At an academic conference in 2018, I heard a speaker claim that a transatlantic slave ship full o... more At an academic conference in 2018, I heard a speaker claim that a transatlantic slave ship full of human cargo can be understood as a cyborg. From my perch in the back row, I gasped, and said under my breath (but, I fear, audibly), "Nooooooo," the "o" drawn out for several seconds, like a moan issuing deep from within. Perhaps I become a cyborg when I merge with my GPS app, and in a trance-like state, follow its directions, trusting Waze to navigate me around Tampa traffic, but a densely packed wooden ship full of the tears and blood and sweat of a kidnapped human workforce reduced to objects? I object. My fundamental disagreement with this thesis is that the cyborg, after Donna Haraway, is in part, a liberatory model freeing us from the epistemological binarism instantiated in the Enlightenment; it is one of the potential complications of Haraway's passing reference to the seamstress in the home sweatshop (170)-which may have mistakenly inspired the comparison to the slave ship-and it is the reason we should not, in my opinion, apply the cyborg model to any mechanism that relegates human beings to subhuman status, as the transatlantic slave trade reduced people to freight, and then to machines and beasts of burden. (Maybe if the slave ship were the Amistad, but even then, I think not.) This way of thinking about the cyborg may be best articulated in Angela Last's essay in this collection: "Cyborgs are intersectional beings that not only have a potential for multiple oppression but multiple solidarities" (70; emphasis mine). Nonetheless, this Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée crcl september 2019 septembre rclc 0319-051x/19/46.
International Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, May 30, 2021
Active Learning in Higher Education, 2021
Defined as ‘networks of learning relationships among students and significant others’, peer assis... more Defined as ‘networks of learning relationships among students and significant others’, peer assisted learning takes a bewildering array of forms in higher education. A useful way to conceptualise these is to draw from ideas of communities of practice and communicative rationality, with the degree of student autonomy a third key element. We illustrate this approach with a study of Kuppi, an example of peer assisted learning initiated and organised entirely by students. We interviewed undergraduate participants from six state universities in Sri Lanka and found strong support for this model of peer assisted learning from student learners and student tutors. These classes are characterised by informality and discussion, flexibility in timing and location and a focus on assessments. Students determine the content and who teaches, whilst tutors give their time without payment, out of fraternity and to improve their own learning and skills. The theory of communicative rationality helped e...
Social Science Research Network, 2021
Coloniality, Ontology, and the Question of the Posthuman, 2017
Cogent Arts & Humanities, 2018
as soon as possible after acceptance. Copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof... more as soon as possible after acceptance. Copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof will be undertaken on this manuscript before final publication of the Version of Record (VoR). Please note that during production and pre-press, errors may be discovered which could affect the content.
Studies in Literature and Language, 2016
Biopolitics—the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed and regu... more Biopolitics—the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed and regulated under regimes of authority—is ordinary currency in society, and ruling political systems exercise surveillance, incarceration and killings to a great extent in this regard. Michel Foucault’s work on the regulation of human beings through the production of power serves as an initial medium of investigation into biopolitics. Yet, Giorgio Agamben probes the covert and overt presence of biopolitical violence in society, particularly through his concepts of state of exception and bare life. The Indian playwright Mahasweta Devi’s Anglophone play-text Mother of 1084 (1973) enables scholars to participate in a critical forum on biopolitical praxis, because of its pervasive and explicit representation of state violence and rebels. Nonetheless, the play-text is often renowned for its reference to feminist ideology and mother-son relationship. Existing scholarship has overlooked the manifesta...
English Review: Journal of English Education, 2013
Error correction in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes has been a focal phenomenon in SLA... more Error correction in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes has been a focal phenomenon in SLA (Second Language Acquisition) research due to some controversial research results and diverse feedback practices. This paper presents a study which explored the relative efficacy of three forms of error correction employed in ESL writing classes: focusing on the acquisition of one grammar element both for immediate and delayed language contexts, and collecting data from university undergraduates, this study employed an experimental research design with a pretest-treatment-posttests structure. The research revealed that the degree of success in acquiring L2 (Second Language) grammar through error correction differs according to the form of the correction and to learning contexts. While the findings are discussed in relation to the previous literature, this paper concludes creating a cline of error correction forms to be promoted in Sri Lankan L2 writing contexts, particularly in ESL cont...
English Review: Journal of English Education, 2011
: Error correction in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes has been a focal phenomenon in S... more : Error correction in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes has been a focal phenomenon in SLA (Second Language Acquisition) research due to some controversial research results and diverse feedback practices. This paper presents a study which explored the relative efficacy of three forms of error correction employed in ESL writing classes: focusing on the acquisition of one grammar element both for immediate and delayed language contexts, and collecting data from university undergraduates, this study employed an experimental research design with a pretest-treatment-posttests structure. The research revealed that the degree of success in acquiring L2 (Second Language) grammar through error correction differs according to the form of the correction and to learning contexts. While the findings are discussed in relation to the previous literature, this paper concludes creating a cline of error correction forms to be promoted in Sri Lankan L2 writing contexts, particularly in ESL cont...
Biopolitics-the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed and regu... more Biopolitics-the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed and regulated under regimes of authority-is ordinary currency in society, and ruling political systems exercise surveillance, incarceration and killings to a great extent in this regard. Michel
In his lectures in 1975-1976, Michel Foucault conceptualised the inclination to commit murders in... more In his lectures in 1975-1976, Michel Foucault conceptualised the inclination to commit murders in political circumstances, and delineated it as ‘political death’ (2003).1 Such killings encompass both corporeal and psychological execution exercised through diverse means, for instance, murder, manslaughter, genocide, social ostracism and exposure to deadly environments. Apparently, today political death is implemented either through implicit biopolitical stratagems or overt violence by those who are already in power or those who attempt to gain power, and is prompted through phenomena such as racism, patriotism and xenophobia. This paper aims to examine ‘political death’ prompted by racism, and interrogates the ways and means by which these murders are actualised and rationalised, but ultimately rendered invisible in society, as represented in Athol Fugard’s Anglophone play-text, Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972): Set against the backdrop of the apartheid epoch, Fugard’s play focuses on the ...
Critical Inquiry in Language Studies
Computer Assisted Language Learning
Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée, 2019
At an academic conference in 2018, I heard a speaker claim that a transatlantic slave ship full o... more At an academic conference in 2018, I heard a speaker claim that a transatlantic slave ship full of human cargo can be understood as a cyborg. From my perch in the back row, I gasped, and said under my breath (but, I fear, audibly), "Nooooooo," the "o" drawn out for several seconds, like a moan issuing deep from within. Perhaps I become a cyborg when I merge with my GPS app, and in a trance-like state, follow its directions, trusting Waze to navigate me around Tampa traffic, but a densely packed wooden ship full of the tears and blood and sweat of a kidnapped human workforce reduced to objects? I object. My fundamental disagreement with this thesis is that the cyborg, after Donna Haraway, is in part, a liberatory model freeing us from the epistemological binarism instantiated in the Enlightenment; it is one of the potential complications of Haraway's passing reference to the seamstress in the home sweatshop (170)-which may have mistakenly inspired the comparison to the slave ship-and it is the reason we should not, in my opinion, apply the cyborg model to any mechanism that relegates human beings to subhuman status, as the transatlantic slave trade reduced people to freight, and then to machines and beasts of burden. (Maybe if the slave ship were the Amistad, but even then, I think not.) This way of thinking about the cyborg may be best articulated in Angela Last's essay in this collection: "Cyborgs are intersectional beings that not only have a potential for multiple oppression but multiple solidarities" (70; emphasis mine). Nonetheless, this Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée crcl september 2019 septembre rclc 0319-051x/19/46.
International Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, May 30, 2021
Active Learning in Higher Education, 2021
Defined as ‘networks of learning relationships among students and significant others’, peer assis... more Defined as ‘networks of learning relationships among students and significant others’, peer assisted learning takes a bewildering array of forms in higher education. A useful way to conceptualise these is to draw from ideas of communities of practice and communicative rationality, with the degree of student autonomy a third key element. We illustrate this approach with a study of Kuppi, an example of peer assisted learning initiated and organised entirely by students. We interviewed undergraduate participants from six state universities in Sri Lanka and found strong support for this model of peer assisted learning from student learners and student tutors. These classes are characterised by informality and discussion, flexibility in timing and location and a focus on assessments. Students determine the content and who teaches, whilst tutors give their time without payment, out of fraternity and to improve their own learning and skills. The theory of communicative rationality helped e...
Social Science Research Network, 2021
Coloniality, Ontology, and the Question of the Posthuman, 2017
Cogent Arts & Humanities, 2018
as soon as possible after acceptance. Copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof... more as soon as possible after acceptance. Copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof will be undertaken on this manuscript before final publication of the Version of Record (VoR). Please note that during production and pre-press, errors may be discovered which could affect the content.
Studies in Literature and Language, 2016
Biopolitics—the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed and regu... more Biopolitics—the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed and regulated under regimes of authority—is ordinary currency in society, and ruling political systems exercise surveillance, incarceration and killings to a great extent in this regard. Michel Foucault’s work on the regulation of human beings through the production of power serves as an initial medium of investigation into biopolitics. Yet, Giorgio Agamben probes the covert and overt presence of biopolitical violence in society, particularly through his concepts of state of exception and bare life. The Indian playwright Mahasweta Devi’s Anglophone play-text Mother of 1084 (1973) enables scholars to participate in a critical forum on biopolitical praxis, because of its pervasive and explicit representation of state violence and rebels. Nonetheless, the play-text is often renowned for its reference to feminist ideology and mother-son relationship. Existing scholarship has overlooked the manifesta...
English Review: Journal of English Education, 2013
Error correction in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes has been a focal phenomenon in SLA... more Error correction in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes has been a focal phenomenon in SLA (Second Language Acquisition) research due to some controversial research results and diverse feedback practices. This paper presents a study which explored the relative efficacy of three forms of error correction employed in ESL writing classes: focusing on the acquisition of one grammar element both for immediate and delayed language contexts, and collecting data from university undergraduates, this study employed an experimental research design with a pretest-treatment-posttests structure. The research revealed that the degree of success in acquiring L2 (Second Language) grammar through error correction differs according to the form of the correction and to learning contexts. While the findings are discussed in relation to the previous literature, this paper concludes creating a cline of error correction forms to be promoted in Sri Lankan L2 writing contexts, particularly in ESL cont...
English Review: Journal of English Education, 2011
: Error correction in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes has been a focal phenomenon in S... more : Error correction in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes has been a focal phenomenon in SLA (Second Language Acquisition) research due to some controversial research results and diverse feedback practices. This paper presents a study which explored the relative efficacy of three forms of error correction employed in ESL writing classes: focusing on the acquisition of one grammar element both for immediate and delayed language contexts, and collecting data from university undergraduates, this study employed an experimental research design with a pretest-treatment-posttests structure. The research revealed that the degree of success in acquiring L2 (Second Language) grammar through error correction differs according to the form of the correction and to learning contexts. While the findings are discussed in relation to the previous literature, this paper concludes creating a cline of error correction forms to be promoted in Sri Lankan L2 writing contexts, particularly in ESL cont...
Biopolitics-the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed and regu... more Biopolitics-the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed and regulated under regimes of authority-is ordinary currency in society, and ruling political systems exercise surveillance, incarceration and killings to a great extent in this regard. Michel
In his lectures in 1975-1976, Michel Foucault conceptualised the inclination to commit murders in... more In his lectures in 1975-1976, Michel Foucault conceptualised the inclination to commit murders in political circumstances, and delineated it as ‘political death’ (2003).1 Such killings encompass both corporeal and psychological execution exercised through diverse means, for instance, murder, manslaughter, genocide, social ostracism and exposure to deadly environments. Apparently, today political death is implemented either through implicit biopolitical stratagems or overt violence by those who are already in power or those who attempt to gain power, and is prompted through phenomena such as racism, patriotism and xenophobia. This paper aims to examine ‘political death’ prompted by racism, and interrogates the ways and means by which these murders are actualised and rationalised, but ultimately rendered invisible in society, as represented in Athol Fugard’s Anglophone play-text, Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972): Set against the backdrop of the apartheid epoch, Fugard’s play focuses on the ...