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Piyaseeli Wijegunasingha (February 20, 1943 – September 2, 2010) was a Sri Lankan literary critic,
Trotskyist Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...
and
Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
scholar, and a member of Sri Lanka's Socialist Equality Party from 1968 until her death. She worked as a lecturer for 44 yearsFernando, Mano. ''Piyaseeli Wijegunasingha Samachara'' (no English translation available). Wijesuriya Grantha Kendraya, 2011, p. ix. at the
University of Colombo The University of Colombo (informally Colombo University or UoC) is a Public University, public research university located primarily in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It is the oldest institution of modern higher education in Sri Lanka. Specialised in t ...
, Sri Lanka, where she became Dean of Faculty for the Department of Sinhala.


Life

Wijegunasinghe attended the
University of Peradeniya The University of Peradeniya (, ) is a Public research university, public university in Sri Lanka, funded by the University Grants Commission of Sri Lanka, University Grants Commission. It is the largest university in Sri Lanka, which was origin ...
and as a student led major political struggles in 1965. She became a committed socialist and internationalist, and in 1968 joined the Revolutionary Communist League, which would later become the Sri Lankan Socialist Equality Party (SEP). During her postgraduate studies in Britain, she was active in the UK Workers Revolutionary Party. Wijegunasinghe began a new school of Marxist literary criticism in Sri Lanka, writing three books and delivering many lectures on this topic. She worked as a professor at the University of Colombo in the Sinhala department, where she taught a course on Marxist literary criticism. Wijegunasinghe translated Marxist books into Sinhala and was a writer for the
World Socialist Web Site The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) is the website of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). It describes itself as an "online newspaper of the international Trotskyist movement". About The WSWS was established on Fe ...
. Wijegunasinghe was married to Wjie Dias, General Secretary of the Sri Lankan SEP, and had a son, Keerthi.


Books

* A Materialist Study of Literature (1982) * A Marxist Study of Modern Sinhala Literary Criticism (1987) * A Reply to Sucharitha Gamlath: Marxist Principles on Criticism of the Arts (1995) * The god of small things: A review and a reply (2004)


Translations

The year of the publication of Sinhala translation is shown with titles. * The Heritage We Defend by David North (1990) * Gerry Healy and His Place in the History of the Fourth International by David North, Part 1 (1991) and Part 2 (1993) * Bolshevism and the Avant-Garde Artists by David Walsh (1993) * The Aesthetic Component of Socialism by David Walsh (1998) * In Defence of Marxism by
Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,; ; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky'' was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure ...
(2002)


References


External links


Fire: A film which bears witness to Deepa Mehta's courage as an artist

Life is not the problem, but the conditions under which it is offered

How war has shattered the life of a Sri Lankan village

In the classical realist tradition

The impact of war on daily life in Sri Lanka

A serious attempt to encourage Sri Lankan opera
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wijegunasinghe, Piyaseeli 1943 births 2010 deaths Sri Lankan Trotskyists Sri Lankan non-fiction writers Academic staff of the University of Colombo Sinhalese people Sri Lankan academics Sri Lankan translators Communist women writers Sri Lankan women academics 20th-century Sri Lankan writers 20th-century Sri Lankan women writers 21st-century Sri Lankan writers 21st-century Sri Lankan women writers