August 30th, 2010 / 12:42 pm
Power Quote
Lily Hoang
Power Quote
Foucault, on Novels
In Madness & Civilization, Michel Foucault says:
The novel constitutes the milieu of perversion, par excellence, of all sensibility; it detaches the soul from all that is immediate and natural in feeling and leads it into an imaginary world of sentiments violent in proportion to their unreality, and less controlled by the gentle laws of nature. (219)
If Foucault says this about readers of novels, just think about what it means for writers of novels.
I don’t even know what that means.
foucault.exe is a software agent that generates ambiguous epigrams
The pomme frite constitutes the morceau of perversion, par excellence, of all sensibility; it detaches the soul from all that is immediate and natural in feeling and leads it into an imaginary world of sentiments violent in proportion to their unreality, and less controlled by the gentle laws of nature.
If Foucault says this about mangeurs de pommes, just think about what it means for friteurs de pommes.
I don’t even know what that means.
Detaches the soul? The gentle laws of nature? Either he considered novelists criminals – or he was just very sensitive.
foucault.exe is a software agent that generates ambiguous epigrams
The pomme frite constitutes the morceau of perversion, par excellence, of all sensibility; it detaches the soul from all that is immediate and natural in feeling and leads it into an imaginary world of sentiments violent in proportion to their unreality, and less controlled by the gentle laws of nature.
If Foucault says this about mangeurs de pommes, just think about what it means for friteurs de pommes.
Lily, from Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984, Section 18: On Literature:
MF: “In Discipline and Punish I only deal with bad literature.”
Q: “How does one distinguish good from bad?”
MF: “Exactly. That’s just what will have to be considered one day.”
More:
MF: “. . . among all these narratives, what is it that sacralizes some and makes them begin to function as
‘literature’?”
Also:
MF: “. . . what is this threshold starting from which a discourse (whether that of a sick person, a criminal, etc.) begins to function in a field described as literature?
We should take these questions up (again) someday.
Janey, great quotes and ultimately v good questions. Please, let’s start to answer them!
Also: Do you agree at all with the quote cited above?
My two cents: It’s hard to argue against the core of what Foucault says. I mean, yes, novels do “detach”–and I hate the word “soul” so let’s use something else, the “mind,” perhaps–the mind from all that is “immediate and natural in feeling.” That is, when reading a novel, poetry, whatever, there is a detachment that occurs. We are simultaneously reading a book in a room–in a material sense–but we are also taken some place else. This division can be nothing short of detachment, right? Furthermore, if the novel is “good” if it functions as a novel ought, then yes, the reader IS led “into an imaginary world of sentiments violent in proportion to their unreality.” I think all Foucault is saying here is that novels manipulate the reader in very fundamental ways. Unfortunately, he saw a connection between novel reading and hysteria. And who knows, maybe he’s right.
Detaches the soul? The gentle laws of nature? Either he considered novelists criminals – or he was just very sensitive.
I don’t agree or disagree with the above citation. Foucault seems to suggest, perhaps he states, that the novel appears to belong to a realm of artificiality that promotes, almost seduces us toward, a certain kind of non-knowledge or sensibility. It is, by definition, though, delirious. But, I distrust definitions. As much as I privilege artificiality. If there is a detachment happening, it is not total, leaving us, the reader, among a world of pure sensibility, out of mind, without condition, subject to laws made equally artificial. Almost as if imaginary worlds and unreality were not, somehow, governed by laws, natural or otherwise. It would appear that Foucault also got it backwards: that the imaginary, too, constitutes the space of perversion leading us to a notion of the novel rigorously attached to a central figure, always without name.
I don’t really know what I’m talking about, of course.
Regardless, the novel is something that, as you know, mirrors the perverse without reflecting anything.
I guess what fascinates me, right now, is what makes one kind of narrative function as a thing called literature? Is it that because it is popular? Or is it because universities embrace it? Is it because it conforms to certain rules? Or is it something else? Something more difficult to find? Something strange? Something that makes us “go”?
And, where are we going?
[True Scholastic Stink ALERT]
Lily, you haven’t really “quoted” Foucault’s perspective on “the connection between novel reading and hysteria”, have you?
Looking at those pages in Madness and Civilization, I think you’ve quoted Foucault’s paraphrase of 18th century views on madness, specifically-ladies’ madness, and artistic excitations of “hysteria” (as Foucault’s footnotes identify: from Beauchesne’s 1783 On the influence of the passions of love on the nervous disorders of women and an “anonymous article” in a “health” publication).
The first sentence of that characteristically elegant paragraph frames its sequence of quotations and re-phrasings (or definienda):
“But it is not only knowledge that detaches man from feeling; it is sensibility itself: a sensibility that is no longer controlled by the movements of nature, but by all the habits, all the demands of social life.”
Here, you can see Rousseau’s idea of ‘social contract’ – of the mangling of ‘nature’ by society – , and, indeed, a key that Foucault names to his perspective of 18th century ideas of madness, ladies’ madness, and art’s excitation of hysteria is Rameau’s Nephew.
But Lily, this opposition of ‘society’ and ‘nature’ is surely not the basis of Foucault’s point of view! His angle on the problem of art catalyzing or accelerating cognitive states (like “madness”) is to be found – along with in many other places – in footnote 9 to the chapter from which you excerpt your quotation:
“[T]his problem of time [. . .] this heterogeneity of two temporal structures: that which is proper to the experience of Unreason and to the knowledge it envelops; that which is proper to the knowledge of madness, and to the science it authorizes.”
(To me, Foucault’s idea – that Unreason communicates its knowledge in a rhetoric opaque to the science authorized by knowledge of madness from without Unreason – is more compelling than Rousseau’s contrast between society and nature – which is the base assumption for your quotation – , interesting as that contrast be.)
The quotation you excerpt from Madness and Civilization is an effort by an historian coming to understand the self-understanding of a long moment in a history of the institution-founding of psychiatry – I think: not to be confused with Foucault’s claims about ‘truths’ then or now.
Well, to me: literature is simply ‘artistic writing’. Sometimes it seems a little unfair to me that genre writing is separated from “literature,” but then I take a look again at some genre fiction — usually science fiction — and I’m reminded again why that prejudice is there.
I find it sad that the Bizarro writers in general — even those who talk of harboring literary ambition — are falling into the same trap of complacency as the other genre fiction. They have their little coterie and everyone just loves everyone else’s latest book to death. Where’s the urge for growth?
It’s pretty telling — and sad — that their ‘leader’ Carlton Mellick III’s grand vision of the genre is to “see Bizarro replace the Cult section.”
Still, I don’t see that genre fiction is any less artistic than non-genre fiction. Sure, genre writers tend to become complacent, like I said, but it has every write to be called “literature” along with non-genre works.
Lily, from Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984, Section 18: On Literature:
MF: “In Discipline and Punish I only deal with bad literature.”
Q: “How does one distinguish good from bad?”
MF: “Exactly. That’s just what will have to be considered one day.”
More:
MF: “. . . among all these narratives, what is it that sacralizes some and makes them begin to function as
‘literature’?”
Also:
MF: “. . . what is this threshold starting from which a discourse (whether that of a sick person, a criminal, etc.) begins to function in a field described as literature?
We should take these questions up (again) someday.
Janey, great quotes and ultimately v good questions. Please, let’s start to answer them!
Also: Do you agree at all with the quote cited above?
My two cents: It’s hard to argue against the core of what Foucault says. I mean, yes, novels do “detach”–and I hate the word “soul” so let’s use something else, the “mind,” perhaps–the mind from all that is “immediate and natural in feeling.” That is, when reading a novel, poetry, whatever, there is a detachment that occurs. We are simultaneously reading a book in a room–in a material sense–but we are also taken some place else. This division can be nothing short of detachment, right? Furthermore, if the novel is “good” if it functions as a novel ought, then yes, the reader IS led “into an imaginary world of sentiments violent in proportion to their unreality.” I think all Foucault is saying here is that novels manipulate the reader in very fundamental ways. Unfortunately, he saw a connection between novel reading and hysteria. And who knows, maybe he’s right.
I don’t agree or disagree with the above citation. Foucault seems to suggest, perhaps he states, that the novel appears to belong to a realm of artificiality that promotes, almost seduces us toward, a certain kind of non-knowledge or sensibility. It is, by definition, though, delirious. But, I distrust definitions. As much as I privilege artificiality. If there is a detachment happening, it is not total, leaving us, the reader, among a world of pure sensibility, out of mind, without condition, subject to laws made equally artificial. Almost as if imaginary worlds and unreality were not, somehow, governed by laws, natural or otherwise. It would appear that Foucault also got it backwards: that the imaginary, too, constitutes the space of perversion leading us to a notion of the novel rigorously attached to a central figure, always without name.
I don’t really know what I’m talking about, of course.
Regardless, the novel is something that, as you know, mirrors the perverse without reflecting anything.
I guess what fascinates me, right now, is what makes one kind of narrative function as a thing called literature? Is it that because it is popular? Or is it because universities embrace it? Is it because it conforms to certain rules? Or is it something else? Something more difficult to find? Something strange? Something that makes us “go”?
And, where are we going?
[True Scholastic Stink ALERT]
Lily, you haven’t really “quoted” Foucault’s perspective on “the connection between novel reading and hysteria”, have you?
Looking at those pages in Madness and Civilization, I think you’ve quoted Foucault’s paraphrase of 18th century views on madness, specifically-ladies’ madness, and artistic excitations of “hysteria” (as Foucault’s footnotes identify: from Beauchesne’s 1783 On the influence of the passions of love on the nervous disorders of women and an “anonymous article” in a “health” publication).
The first sentence of that characteristically elegant paragraph frames its sequence of quotations and re-phrasings (or definienda):
“But it is not only knowledge that detaches man from feeling; it is sensibility itself: a sensibility that is no longer controlled by the movements of nature, but by all the habits, all the demands of social life.”
Here, you can see Rousseau’s idea of ‘social contract’ – of the mangling of ‘nature’ by society – , and, indeed, a key that Foucault names to his perspective of 18th century ideas of madness, ladies’ madness, and art’s excitation of hysteria is Rameau’s Nephew.
But Lily, this opposition of ‘society’ and ‘nature’ is surely not the basis of Foucault’s point of view! His angle on the problem of art catalyzing or accelerating cognitive states (like “madness”) is to be found – along with in many other places – in footnote 9 to the chapter from which you excerpt your quotation:
“[T]his problem of time [. . .] this heterogeneity of two temporal structures: that which is proper to the experience of Unreason and to the knowledge it envelops; that which is proper to the knowledge of madness, and to the science it authorizes.”
(To me, Foucault’s idea – that Unreason communicates its knowledge in a rhetoric opaque to the science authorized by knowledge of madness from without Unreason – is more compelling than Rousseau’s contrast between society and nature – which is the base assumption for your quotation – , interesting as that contrast be.)
The quotation you excerpt from Madness and Civilization is an effort by an historian coming to understand the self-understanding of a long moment in a history of the institution-founding of psychiatry – I think: not to be confused with Foucault’s claims about ‘truths’ then or now.
Well, to me: literature is simply ‘artistic writing’. Sometimes it seems a little unfair to me that genre writing is separated from “literature,” but then I take a look again at some genre fiction — usually science fiction — and I’m reminded again why that prejudice is there.
I find it sad that the Bizarro writers in general — even those who talk of harboring literary ambition — are falling into the same trap of complacency as the other genre fiction. They have their little coterie and everyone just loves everyone else’s latest book to death. Where’s the urge for growth?
It’s pretty telling — and sad — that their ‘leader’ Carlton Mellick III’s grand vision of the genre is to “see Bizarro replace the Cult section.”
Still, I don’t see that genre fiction is any less artistic than non-genre fiction. Sure, genre writers tend to become complacent, like I said, but it has every write to be called “literature” along with non-genre works.
Deadgod: You’ve aptly pointed two errors in the quote I’ve chosen: 1. I take notes by hand, and I’ve been mulling over this for months now, without referencing the original nearly enough. Yes, you’re right that he’s paraphrasing – analyzing – what others said, nonetheless, I’d still argue that his analysis displays its own rhetoric, its own suasion, if you will. 2. Anything taken out of context can be bastardized, which was almost my point. I wanted to start a conversation about what the novel does, psychologically, to the reader. Furthermore, if the novel displaces the reader from herself, what does this say about the novelist?
All in all, M&C was a fascinating read. I learned a lot, thought a lot, about madness and reason and unreason and the whole concept of science, hospitalization, psychiatry, what it means to be hidden away – and from whom – punished – and for what? – etc etc. I’m no philosopher or historian, oddly enough, I read the book as research in Geography – about which MF has more than enough to say! by which I mean little other than circumnavigation – for someone else, “work” on the topic of disability and citizenship. That is, I apologize if my reading of the text is too sophomoric.
Also: I didn’t cite the women reading & hysteria bit because that came from memory alone. I didn’t take it down in my notes. Quite honestly, I didn’t even remember which century he was talking about, much less if hysteria was the “hot diagnosis” of the time. So, I’ll concede to you again.
Janey: Are you asking what remains in the canon, or, what we perceive to be “good literature” now? There is a slight difference, sure, but both questions need some serious thought. Let’s have it, no?
The notion of “The Canon” is a nostalgic artifact of faded Hegemony… but there are canonical debates about “The Canon”… seems like a waste that they’re so rarely connected and/or built-upon…
http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/the_pedagogical_habit/
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2008/12/the-rise-fall-and-curious-afterlife-of-the-great-books.html
Steven: “The notion of ‘The Canon’ is a nostalgic artifact of faded Hegemony”? Beautiful writing, sure, but hegemony has hardly faded, maybe in Germany, but over here, hegemony hegemones on with brilliance, probably because we use Tide, no fading! no color bleeding!
And whereas I agree that the “Canon” is a “nostalgic artifact” – I like that very much, by the way! – this doesn’t in fact change its existence. In high school English class, at university, even in grad school, I was taught the canon. I don’t want to speak for everyone’s experience, but it would be hard to imagine an education that didn’t include the canon, flawed though it is. So I’m having a hard time teasing out what yr argument is, not trying to be rude, just want some clarification.
Lily, there are a multiplicity of “canons” now (Queer Theory/PC/ post-Gender, post-Racialist and French Fad Meta-Studies have tossed out half of what would have been central to “The Canon” in 1960) and a multiplicity of canons means *no* canon. There are a few texts/oeuvres there are still widely-considered Foundational (Shakespeare, obviously, but will he even stand in a century? No guarantees) but even Milton is under attack, whereas Jane Austen is much more likely to be central to some syllabus than she would have been 50 years ago.
Cultural Hegemony, in 1900, meant White Male “Upper” Class and *they* determined The Canon and taught it like Mosaic Law. Industrial Hegemony still looks that way, but such cultural Hegemony is a thing of the past. Toni Morrison is valued higher than Dante now! That would have been impossible in 1900 (even if she’d been writing then).
erratum: “is”
Deadgod: You’ve aptly pointed two errors in the quote I’ve chosen: 1. I take notes by hand, and I’ve been mulling over this for months now, without referencing the original nearly enough. Yes, you’re right that he’s paraphrasing – analyzing – what others said, nonetheless, I’d still argue that his analysis displays its own rhetoric, its own suasion, if you will. 2. Anything taken out of context can be bastardized, which was almost my point. I wanted to start a conversation about what the novel does, psychologically, to the reader. Furthermore, if the novel displaces the reader from herself, what does this say about the novelist?
All in all, M&C was a fascinating read. I learned a lot, thought a lot, about madness and reason and unreason and the whole concept of science, hospitalization, psychiatry, what it means to be hidden away – and from whom – punished – and for what? – etc etc. I’m no philosopher or historian, oddly enough, I read the book as research in Geography – about which MF has more than enough to say! by which I mean little other than circumnavigation – for someone else, “work” on the topic of disability and citizenship. That is, I apologize if my reading of the text is too sophomoric.
Also: I didn’t cite the women reading & hysteria bit because that came from memory alone. I didn’t take it down in my notes. Quite honestly, I didn’t even remember which century he was talking about, much less if hysteria was the “hot diagnosis” of the time. So, I’ll concede to you again.
Janey: Are you asking what remains in the canon, or, what we perceive to be “good literature” now? There is a slight difference, sure, but both questions need some serious thought. Let’s have it, no?
Now, this has always been a Political matter, but it’s now *explicitly* political (for those who care) because the “Culture” is “up for grabs”… largely because the actual Power isn’t; the top of the pyramid has learned to maintain a status quo without needing “The Canon” to back it up (just as they no longer need The Bible, which used to be, of course, the core of The Western Canon). In other words, it’s no threat to the stability of The System if you think Toni Morrison is more important than Dante. But it’s a threat to the conservative side of the high end of the servant class… ie, explicitly conservative academics; this little essay embodies the whole argument and ends with bitter sense of loss (note the coded Bellow reference near the end; Bellow the striver, the arriviste, the reactionary pitbull guarding the Canon Gates, is the perfect symbol for this guy’s angst):
***The Canon Wars
***17 Sep 2007 04:38 pm
***Rachel Donadio, on Allan Bloom:
Today it’s generally agreed that the multiculturalists won the canon wars. Reading lists were broadened to include more works by women and minority writers, and most scholars consider that a positive development. Yet 20 years later, there’s a more complicated sense of the costs and benefits of those transformations. Here, the lines aren’t drawn between right and left in the traditional political sense, but between those who defend the idea of a distinct body of knowledge and texts that students should master and those who focus more on modes of inquiry and interpretation.
It’s this latter debate that’s crucial to understanding what’s wrong with the contemporary university. In a better world, the multiculturalists and the canonists should have been able to meet halfway – preserving the idea of a canon, while expanding it to include more works from outside the circle of Dead White Males. Such a compromise would have ended up cluttering syllabi with more politically-correct junk than a reactionary like myself might like, but it would have preserved the essential liberal-arts notion that there are great books, and that one of the missions of the university should be to expose its students to as many of them as possible.
This did happen to some extent: As Donadio writes, “In 1965, the authors most frequently assigned in English classes were Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Dryden, Pope and T. S. Eliot, according to a survey by the National Association of Scholars … In 1998, they were Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jane Austen, Milton, Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison.” Obviously, having Morrison and to a lesser extent Woolf in that group is somewhat depressing, but it wouldn’t be all that objectionable if most students at top-flight colleges were being required to read this group of authors; a week wasted on Sula seems a small price to pay for a student body that’s acquainted with Shakespeare’s tragedies. The trouble is that they aren’t. Instead of keeping requirements in place but compromising on their content, too many colleges – my alma mater included – rushed to embrace the “modes of inquiry” (or in Harvard-ese, “approaches to knowledge”) view of education, and then breathed a sigh of relief that they’d set aside the messy debates over whether there’s a Proust of the Papuans, while freeing their overspecialized young professors from the burdens of teaching survey courses. And that was how the canon wars ended – they made a desert, and called it peace.*****
(Christ, Lily, please forgive the fact that my first response to your response is riddled with typos but we were about to put our Offsprung to bed and I was in a rush…)
I want to believe in what you’re saying, Steven, really, I do, nonetheless, I remain skeptical, not because of the merits of yr argument but because of my long-standing relationship to the academy. Every semester, when courses were discussed, special attention had to be paid to make sure our conception of literature was adequately “representative.” That is, there needs to be a Women & Lit course, an Asian American lit course (which the college I used to teach at did not offer), an African American lit course (also, sadly absent, though not for lack of trying!), etc etc. What I mean is, as long as we’re talking in terms of “separate but equal” there can be no equality. Yes, I agree with you that the inclusion of women like Woolf etc attempts to “balance” the canon, though I still believe canon is the canon, one filled mostly with dead white dudes, and the inclusion of women like Morrison prove more to be the “exception to the rule,” which is often more damaging than the rule itself, any elementary racial theory to proves that true. Call me cynical. I wish I could believe, trust me I do. But you’ve given me some hope. And for that, thank you.
The notion of “The Canon” is a nostalgic artifact of faded Hegemony… but there are canonical debates about “The Canon”… seems like a waste that they’re so rarely connected and/or built-upon…
http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/the_pedagogical_habit/
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2008/12/the-rise-fall-and-curious-afterlife-of-the-great-books.html
Steven: “The notion of ‘The Canon’ is a nostalgic artifact of faded Hegemony”? Beautiful writing, sure, but hegemony has hardly faded, maybe in Germany, but over here, hegemony hegemones on with brilliance, probably because we use Tide, no fading! no color bleeding!
And whereas I agree that the “Canon” is a “nostalgic artifact” – I like that very much, by the way! – this doesn’t in fact change its existence. In high school English class, at university, even in grad school, I was taught the canon. I don’t want to speak for everyone’s experience, but it would be hard to imagine an education that didn’t include the canon, flawed though it is. So I’m having a hard time teasing out what yr argument is, not trying to be rude, just want some clarification.
You’re both confusing the Western Canon with an academic reading list. As long as there are writers and readers, the Canon isn’t going anywhere. Academic people have proven that the canon is hard to change and impossible to kill (though that hasn’t stopped them from trying!). And no academic theory, not even Queer Theory, could ever displace it. Shakespeare is more widely read today than he was in 1666, and not just because more people are hooked on phonics.
That’s because the process of canonization is dependent on writers and readers, not just professors and curriculum developers. Certain poets and authors get read and tend to have more influence than others. This process is many centuries older than the university system, stretching back to the Hebrew Bible and Homer, and will probably outlive it, long after the last grad student has croaked.
Even Shakespeare wasn’t always “Shakespeare”; what did Tolstoy say about Goethe/The Germans being responsible for making Shakespeare a star? These things fluctuate. And “The Canon” is *a reading list*… not a hollow box that retains its dimensions and fundamental qualities no matter what it contains. We are chauvinists of Our Now… just a few centuries of displacement, back or forward from any starting point, shows there are no fixed attributes to “The Canon”. That Normative Dream is (conservative) political nonsense and the first irony will have to be that, asked to describe “The Canon” in enough detail to be able to discuss it, your first (and only) recourse is to “an academic reading list”.
Even if the “reading list” is semi-stable, the interpretations (and “reverence” factor) are not: a lot hinges on that. A reading of Conrad or Melville or Clemens which *indicts* them, or uses them as comparative Straight Men (no pun intended) for, say, Queer texts or Diaspora narratives, is anti-canonical in essence, even if it draws on Dead White Male sources to press the case. Undermining the possibility of the *moral* reading undermines the *point* of a “The Canon” and the moral reading is already too out-of-fashion (on one side of this debate) to be rescued. Yeah and do you really suppose “The Canon” will retain its shape when Spanish (or even Chinese) becomes the dominant language in North America… ?
“Shakespeare is more widely read today than he was in 1666…”
A demographic factoid. Next?
“Certain poets and authors get read and tend to have more influence than others.”
Era-contingent. Local. Political. Ask Milton. Ask Pound. Ask Kipling.
Believe it or not (and I’m sure you know), this debate isn’t new; it didn’t start on this thread (laugh) and it’s by no means an open-and-shut case. The trouble with it, in general, is that it always tends to start from square one.
The canon isn’t a reading list… it is a conversation that can be found by reading certain texts. This is an important distinction, because it lets us better understand what is and isn’t dead/postmodernwordoftheday/thestateofbeing about the ‘canon’.
when a people/person/culture join western, modern society, they are joining, knowningly or not, the company of the canon because they canon is what created the modern world. It will survive as long as history will, and maybe a little longer.
Lily, there are a multiplicity of “canons” now (Queer Theory/PC/ post-Gender, post-Racialist and French Fad Meta-Studies have tossed out half of what would have been central to “The Canon” in 1960) and a multiplicity of canons means *no* canon. There are a few texts/oeuvres there are still widely-considered Foundational (Shakespeare, obviously, but will he even stand in a century? No guarantees) but even Milton is under attack, whereas Jane Austen is much more likely to be central to some syllabus than she would have been 50 years ago.
Cultural Hegemony, in 1900, meant White Male “Upper” Class and *they* determined The Canon and taught it like Mosaic Law. Industrial Hegemony still looks that way, but such cultural Hegemony is a thing of the past. Toni Morrison is valued higher than Dante now! That would have been impossible in 1900 (even if she’d been writing then).
erratum: “is”
Now, this has always been a Political matter, but it’s now *explicitly* political (for those who care) because the “Culture” is “up for grabs”… largely because the actual Power isn’t; the top of the pyramid has learned to maintain a status quo without needing “The Canon” to back it up (just as they no longer need The Bible, which used to be, of course, the core of The Western Canon). In other words, it’s no threat to the stability of The System if you think Toni Morrison is more important than Dante. But it’s a threat to the conservative side of the high end of the servant class… ie, explicitly conservative academics; this little essay embodies the whole argument and ends with bitter sense of loss (note the coded Bellow reference near the end; Bellow the striver, the arriviste, the reactionary pitbull guarding the Canon Gates, is the perfect symbol for this guy’s angst):
***The Canon Wars
***17 Sep 2007 04:38 pm
***Rachel Donadio, on Allan Bloom:
Today it’s generally agreed that the multiculturalists won the canon wars. Reading lists were broadened to include more works by women and minority writers, and most scholars consider that a positive development. Yet 20 years later, there’s a more complicated sense of the costs and benefits of those transformations. Here, the lines aren’t drawn between right and left in the traditional political sense, but between those who defend the idea of a distinct body of knowledge and texts that students should master and those who focus more on modes of inquiry and interpretation.
It’s this latter debate that’s crucial to understanding what’s wrong with the contemporary university. In a better world, the multiculturalists and the canonists should have been able to meet halfway – preserving the idea of a canon, while expanding it to include more works from outside the circle of Dead White Males. Such a compromise would have ended up cluttering syllabi with more politically-correct junk than a reactionary like myself might like, but it would have preserved the essential liberal-arts notion that there are great books, and that one of the missions of the university should be to expose its students to as many of them as possible.
This did happen to some extent: As Donadio writes, “In 1965, the authors most frequently assigned in English classes were Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Dryden, Pope and T. S. Eliot, according to a survey by the National Association of Scholars … In 1998, they were Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jane Austen, Milton, Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison.” Obviously, having Morrison and to a lesser extent Woolf in that group is somewhat depressing, but it wouldn’t be all that objectionable if most students at top-flight colleges were being required to read this group of authors; a week wasted on Sula seems a small price to pay for a student body that’s acquainted with Shakespeare’s tragedies. The trouble is that they aren’t. Instead of keeping requirements in place but compromising on their content, too many colleges – my alma mater included – rushed to embrace the “modes of inquiry” (or in Harvard-ese, “approaches to knowledge”) view of education, and then breathed a sigh of relief that they’d set aside the messy debates over whether there’s a Proust of the Papuans, while freeing their overspecialized young professors from the burdens of teaching survey courses. And that was how the canon wars ended – they made a desert, and called it peace.*****
(Christ, Lily, please forgive the fact that my first response to your response is riddled with typos but we were about to put our Offsprung to bed and I was in a rush…)
I want to believe in what you’re saying, Steven, really, I do, nonetheless, I remain skeptical, not because of the merits of yr argument but because of my long-standing relationship to the academy. Every semester, when courses were discussed, special attention had to be paid to make sure our conception of literature was adequately “representative.” That is, there needs to be a Women & Lit course, an Asian American lit course (which the college I used to teach at did not offer), an African American lit course (also, sadly absent, though not for lack of trying!), etc etc. What I mean is, as long as we’re talking in terms of “separate but equal” there can be no equality. Yes, I agree with you that the inclusion of women like Woolf etc attempts to “balance” the canon, though I still believe canon is the canon, one filled mostly with dead white dudes, and the inclusion of women like Morrison prove more to be the “exception to the rule,” which is often more damaging than the rule itself, any elementary racial theory to proves that true. Call me cynical. I wish I could believe, trust me I do. But you’ve given me some hope. And for that, thank you.
I agree, and this is why I’ve never liked the term ‘canon’ as a way of describing it. I think it’d be more apt to describe it as a literary heritage, and any western writer worth her salt is necessarily becoming a part of that conversation, like it or not.
And this explains why Steven is able to say “asked to describe ‘The Canon’ in enough detail to be able to discuss it, your first (and only) recourse is to “an academic reading list’.” The only recourse is to an academic reading list precisely because the “canon” is -not- a reading list. A professor–or even a group of professors–can’t alter the “canon” by simply saying “Well, author X is out, and now author Y is in.” And honestly the idea that the “point” of a canon is some kind of moral reading is pretty funny. It’s the sum result of centuries of creation, the interaction of all the creative readers and writers there’ve been through the years. And the idea that the point of artistic creation is a moral one is of J.Gardner-level absurdity.
I don’t understand how a Diaspora narrative or a Queer text could be “anti-canonical” in nature. In fact Steven pointed out that they are reactions to past voices. How can they draw upon their literary heritage without somehow contributing to that phenomenon? We are not the first generation to “indict” our predecessors while also claiming to be completely distinct from them.
And how in the world is Milton’s influence merely era-contingent? Is Whitman’s influence era-contingent? Because, more than 100 years later, it’s clearly still alive and well.
You’re both confusing the Western Canon with an academic reading list. As long as there are writers and readers, the Canon isn’t going anywhere. Academic people have proven that the canon is hard to change and impossible to kill (though that hasn’t stopped them from trying!). And no academic theory, not even Queer Theory, could ever displace it. Shakespeare is more widely read today than he was in 1666, and not just because more people are hooked on phonics.
That’s because the process of canonization is dependent on writers and readers, not just professors and curriculum developers. Certain poets and authors get read and tend to have more influence than others. This process is many centuries older than the university system, stretching back to the Hebrew Bible and Homer, and will probably outlive it, long after the last grad student has croaked.
Even Shakespeare wasn’t always “Shakespeare”; what did Tolstoy say about Goethe/The Germans being responsible for making Shakespeare a star? These things fluctuate. And “The Canon” is *a reading list*… not a hollow box that retains its dimensions and fundamental qualities no matter what it contains. We are chauvinists of Our Now… just a few centuries of displacement, back or forward from any starting point, shows there are no fixed attributes to “The Canon”. That Normative Dream is (conservative) political nonsense and the first irony will have to be that, asked to describe “The Canon” in enough detail to be able to discuss it, your first (and only) recourse is to “an academic reading list”.
Even if the “reading list” is semi-stable, the interpretations (and “reverence” factor) are not: a lot hinges on that. A reading of Conrad or Melville or Clemens which *indicts* them, or uses them as comparative Straight Men (no pun intended) for, say, Queer texts or Diaspora narratives, is anti-canonical in essence, even if it draws on Dead White Male sources to press the case. Undermining the possibility of the *moral* reading undermines the *point* of a “The Canon” and the moral reading is already too out-of-fashion (on one side of this debate) to be rescued. Yeah and do you really suppose “The Canon” will retain its shape when Spanish (or even Chinese) becomes the dominant language in North America… ?
“Shakespeare is more widely read today than he was in 1666…”
A demographic factoid. Next?
“Certain poets and authors get read and tend to have more influence than others.”
Era-contingent. Local. Political. Ask Milton. Ask Pound. Ask Kipling.
Believe it or not (and I’m sure you know), this debate isn’t new; it didn’t start on this thread (laugh) and it’s by no means an open-and-shut case. The trouble with it, in general, is that it always tends to start from square one.
The canon isn’t a reading list… it is a conversation that can be found by reading certain texts. This is an important distinction, because it lets us better understand what is and isn’t dead/postmodernwordoftheday/thestateofbeing about the ‘canon’.
when a people/person/culture join western, modern society, they are joining, knowningly or not, the company of the canon because they canon is what created the modern world. It will survive as long as history will, and maybe a little longer.
I agree, and this is why I’ve never liked the term ‘canon’ as a way of describing it. I think it’d be more apt to describe it as a literary heritage, and any western writer worth her salt is necessarily becoming a part of that conversation, like it or not.
And this explains why Steven is able to say “asked to describe ‘The Canon’ in enough detail to be able to discuss it, your first (and only) recourse is to “an academic reading list’.” The only recourse is to an academic reading list precisely because the “canon” is -not- a reading list. A professor–or even a group of professors–can’t alter the “canon” by simply saying “Well, author X is out, and now author Y is in.” And honestly the idea that the “point” of a canon is some kind of moral reading is pretty funny. It’s the sum result of centuries of creation, the interaction of all the creative readers and writers there’ve been through the years. And the idea that the point of artistic creation is a moral one is of J.Gardner-level absurdity.
I don’t understand how a Diaspora narrative or a Queer text could be “anti-canonical” in nature. In fact Steven pointed out that they are reactions to past voices. How can they draw upon their literary heritage without somehow contributing to that phenomenon? We are not the first generation to “indict” our predecessors while also claiming to be completely distinct from them.
And how in the world is Milton’s influence merely era-contingent? Is Whitman’s influence era-contingent? Because, more than 100 years later, it’s clearly still alive and well.
As long as you guys state, essentially, “The Canon is that which is called ‘The Canon'”, you can never go wrong. If it’s not an actual list, it’s a Catch-All Abstraction. Debate impossible.
“And honestly the idea that the “point” of a canon is some kind of moral reading is pretty funny.”
It’s not the point of “a” canon; it’s the point of “The Canon”. You think the point of “The Canon” is *aesthetical*? You’re making my point for me: your reading of “The Canon” is antithetical to “The Canon’s” point… because you’re too modern… without even realizing it. You guys are post-(modern)-Bloomites to the extent that his “aura” has affected you while the essence of his (reactionary) argument passed you by.
I’m going to quote someone I don’t always agree with, here, but he (Morgan Meis) makes the point nicely:
“The idea of a “canon” is in tatters. A canon needs an established cultural authority, and there is no guiding authority in culture anymore. There are no real gatekeepers. The barbarians aren’t merely at the gates — they long ago passed through the gates and are comfortably strolling around town. They are ordering lattes at the museum café right now. More honestly, perhaps, it should be said that we’re all barbarians. We are them and they are us. This is a terribly bothersome situation to some people, usually to the very people who still think they can show a difference between themselves and the barbarians. They don’t want to be barbarians. The most succinct response to such people is: tough shit. The task at hand is to deal with the world as it actually is, not as you wish it were.
“Once you stop complaining and start getting back to work, it becomes clear that the barbarianization of all things affords some interesting opportunities. There are benefits to having a canon, of course. For one, you’ve got standards by which to measure yourself and others. But one of the most troubling things about a canon is the way it becomes unquestionable. You’re never able to ask the canon “Why?” It is the standard by which one asks why. This is meant to prevent infinite regress. If the standard can itself be judged, then there must be a more primary standard, and so on, ad infinitum. The canon stops all of that cold. It answers those disturbing questions before they can even be asked. You learn from the canon in order to understand what the rules are and then you go out and apply them. What you cannot do is turn back and start asking questions about the canon itself. A canon doesn’t work that way.”
Later in the essay, Meis quotes Catullus, a “canonical” poet whose rising and falling and rising stock serves my argument nicely. Racy Catullus has been getting himself banned in various places and eras for a long, long time: the Victorians found him disgusting, as did a lot of bookish types (at least, in public) during the Middle Ages. Catullus never knew when he’d switch from “canonical” to “anti-canonical”… which is why it’s a little rich to say:
“Whitman’s influence era-contingent? Because, more than 100 years later, it’s clearly still alive and well.”
A whopping 100 years, eh? Wow.
“When American literature became an academic subject in schools and universities in the 1920s, Whitman’s reputation was still obscured by the New Critic preference for the well-made, rigorously impersonal poem. As late as the 1940s Gay Wilson Allen, who would produce in the next decade the first definitive biography of the poet, had difficulty finding a publisher for his comprehensively researched Walt Whitman Handbook (1946).” (Jerome Loving, introduction to Leaves of Grass, Oxford University Press). These two sentences tell us two things: the canonical Whitman is not really much more than 70 years old… and the canonical *American Literature* is only itself about 90 years old. Which means that when I was in college, it was only about *60* years old, and Upton Sinclair and Thornton Wilder and Pear S. Buck (for example) were already cooling off.
The thing you argue for (and the argument itself) is an ur-political phenom that lingers as a phantom (that Catch All Abstraction)… again: you’re being nostalgic for the “Western” bit of the 19th century, when there really *was* a “The Canon”, and it functioned very nicely as a justification for the convulsive expansions (“progress”) of Imperialism; the Euro-centrics could point to the morally-intellectual sublimity of The Canon (chunks of which were a patchwork of texts appropriated from pretty far outside any European “tradition”; what’s “Hellenism”, in the end, but some sleight-of-hand to fumigate the Oriental stink from antiquity?) as their license. First, of course, they’d have to teach the subjugated savages to read. Using The Bible as The Primer.
“We’re” still Imperialist, of course (Jeezis, pretty soon we’ll need to develop interstellar space travel just because we’ve run out of shit to invade)… but “The Canon” is no longer necessary as a justification (and/or unifier)… Hollywood is more than enough. And that’s why the debate is “raging”… it’s up-for-grabs…. because the utility just ain’t there in any meaningful sense. Will “The Humanities” even be taught in North American Universities of 2100 AD? Kinda doubtful.
You guys are just a good old fashioned Newtonian demonstration of inertia. And I therefore salute Thee!
A literal canon needs a cultural authority. The thing that is hinted at by the word ‘canon’–the thing that academic reading lists are trying poorly to define–does not.
I wonder, if our current situation is “anti-canonical,” then how would you describe it? Are we writing ahistorically–completely set free from the literary achievements of the past?
It’s probable that the point of The Canon, a literal canon, a group of centrally approved texts, was always a moral one. “Read these things, else you are, gasp, unsophisticated!” But like you said, that was dead before it started. The idea that the “canon” is the product of creative response is not merely the result of Bloom’s fat “aura.” I’m drawing most of my thoughts on this–the importance of creative reading/writing, the process of originality–from Emerson’s work. From The Poet: “The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. They receive of the soul as he also receives, but they more.”
One more comment and then I’m out, because I can’t be sucked into this cyclical online debate again without hope of *some* fresh development in it. But: please don’t jump to conclusions and think I’m advocating for certain authors and against others with my argument; on the level of individual authors or works I have a different point to make. I’m only addressing the notion of “The Canon” here (and I just remembered that my first post-college argument about “The Canon” was in the early 90s, with a German Uni student, but it never went further than her strident assertion that “canon” is pronounced with a long “a”…).
(Investigate the early uses of the word in terms of the “normative”, btw…)
So: as far as DWMs go: I think, for example, that Toni Morrison is just an undeveloped Laurence Sterne (replacing his sense of humor, which derives from his Existential sense of grievance, with her very narrow sense of grievance). So it’s not as though I have the obvious agenda here. I don’t.
Ryan: we cross-posted… my last comment wasn’t a response to yours. I’m running out the door right now but I *will* address your latest comment before I retire from this…
As long as you guys state, essentially, “The Canon is that which is called ‘The Canon'”, you can never go wrong. If it’s not an actual list, it’s a Catch-All Abstraction. Debate impossible.
“And honestly the idea that the “point” of a canon is some kind of moral reading is pretty funny.”
It’s not the point of “a” canon; it’s the point of “The Canon”. You think the point of “The Canon” is *aesthetical*? You’re making my point for me: your reading of “The Canon” is antithetical to “The Canon’s” point… because you’re too modern… without even realizing it. You guys are post-(modern)-Bloomites to the extent that his “aura” has affected you while the essence of his (reactionary) argument passed you by.
Yes, i am still typing. I have a 3,500 work post on the “canon” on the way. I will inflict it upon you all soon. Do you really believe that I have a life away from this comment section? I sleep, and sometimes I play with myself while reading my own comments back and delighting in how intelligent and insightful they are, but that it really it. I’m quite lonely.
I’m going to quote someone I don’t always agree with, here, but he (Morgan Meis) makes the point nicely:
“The idea of a “canon” is in tatters. A canon needs an established cultural authority, and there is no guiding authority in culture anymore. There are no real gatekeepers. The barbarians aren’t merely at the gates — they long ago passed through the gates and are comfortably strolling around town. They are ordering lattes at the museum café right now. More honestly, perhaps, it should be said that we’re all barbarians. We are them and they are us. This is a terribly bothersome situation to some people, usually to the very people who still think they can show a difference between themselves and the barbarians. They don’t want to be barbarians. The most succinct response to such people is: tough shit. The task at hand is to deal with the world as it actually is, not as you wish it were.
“Once you stop complaining and start getting back to work, it becomes clear that the barbarianization of all things affords some interesting opportunities. There are benefits to having a canon, of course. For one, you’ve got standards by which to measure yourself and others. But one of the most troubling things about a canon is the way it becomes unquestionable. You’re never able to ask the canon “Why?” It is the standard by which one asks why. This is meant to prevent infinite regress. If the standard can itself be judged, then there must be a more primary standard, and so on, ad infinitum. The canon stops all of that cold. It answers those disturbing questions before they can even be asked. You learn from the canon in order to understand what the rules are and then you go out and apply them. What you cannot do is turn back and start asking questions about the canon itself. A canon doesn’t work that way.”
Later in the essay, Meis quotes Catullus, a “canonical” poet whose rising and falling and rising stock serves my argument nicely. Racy Catullus has been getting himself banned in various places and eras for a long, long time: the Victorians found him disgusting, as did a lot of bookish types (at least, in public) during the Middle Ages. Catullus never knew when he’d switch from “canonical” to “anti-canonical”… which is why it’s a little rich to say:
“Whitman’s influence era-contingent? Because, more than 100 years later, it’s clearly still alive and well.”
A whopping 100 years, eh? Wow.
“When American literature became an academic subject in schools and universities in the 1920s, Whitman’s reputation was still obscured by the New Critic preference for the well-made, rigorously impersonal poem. As late as the 1940s Gay Wilson Allen, who would produce in the next decade the first definitive biography of the poet, had difficulty finding a publisher for his comprehensively researched Walt Whitman Handbook (1946).” (Jerome Loving, introduction to Leaves of Grass, Oxford University Press). These two sentences tell us two things: the canonical Whitman is not really much more than 70 years old… and the canonical *American Literature* is only itself about 90 years old. Which means that when I was in college, it was only about *60* years old, and Upton Sinclair and Thornton Wilder and Pear S. Buck (for example) were already cooling off.
The thing you argue for (and the argument itself) is an ur-political phenom that lingers as a phantom (that Catch All Abstraction)… again: you’re being nostalgic for the “Western” bit of the 19th century, when there really *was* a “The Canon”, and it functioned very nicely as a justification for the convulsive expansions (“progress”) of Imperialism; the Euro-centrics could point to the morally-intellectual sublimity of The Canon (chunks of which were a patchwork of texts appropriated from pretty far outside any European “tradition”; what’s “Hellenism”, in the end, but some sleight-of-hand to fumigate the Oriental stink from antiquity?) as their license. First, of course, they’d have to teach the subjugated savages to read. Using The Bible as The Primer.
“We’re” still Imperialist, of course (Jeezis, pretty soon we’ll need to develop interstellar space travel just because we’ve run out of shit to invade)… but “The Canon” is no longer necessary as a justification (and/or unifier)… Hollywood is more than enough. And that’s why the debate is “raging”… it’s up-for-grabs…. because the utility just ain’t there in any meaningful sense. Will “The Humanities” even be taught in North American Universities of 2100 AD? Kinda doubtful.
You guys are just a good old fashioned Newtonian demonstration of inertia. And I therefore salute Thee!
A literal canon needs a cultural authority. The thing that is hinted at by the word ‘canon’–the thing that academic reading lists are trying poorly to define–does not.
I wonder, if our current situation is “anti-canonical,” then how would you describe it? Are we writing ahistorically–completely set free from the literary achievements of the past?
It’s probable that the point of The Canon, a literal canon, a group of centrally approved texts, was always a moral one. “Read these things, else you are, gasp, unsophisticated!” But like you said, that was dead before it started. The idea that the “canon” is the product of creative response is not merely the result of Bloom’s fat “aura.” I’m drawing most of my thoughts on this–the importance of creative reading/writing, the process of originality–from Emerson’s work. From The Poet: “The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. They receive of the soul as he also receives, but they more.”
One more comment and then I’m out, because I can’t be sucked into this cyclical online debate again without hope of *some* fresh development in it. But: please don’t jump to conclusions and think I’m advocating for certain authors and against others with my argument; on the level of individual authors or works I have a different point to make. I’m only addressing the notion of “The Canon” here (and I just remembered that my first post-college argument about “The Canon” was in the early 90s, with a German Uni student, but it never went further than her strident assertion that “canon” is pronounced with a long “a”…).
(Investigate the early uses of the word in terms of the “normative”, btw…)
So: as far as DWMs go: I think, for example, that Toni Morrison is just an undeveloped Laurence Sterne (replacing his sense of humor, which derives from his Existential sense of grievance, with her very narrow sense of grievance). So it’s not as though I have the obvious agenda here. I don’t.
Ryan: we cross-posted… my last comment wasn’t a response to yours. I’m running out the door right now but I *will* address your latest comment before I retire from this…
Yes, i am still typing. I have a 3,500 work post on the “canon” on the way. I will inflict it upon you all soon. Do you really believe that I have a life away from this comment section? I sleep, and sometimes I play with myself while reading my own comments back and delighting in how intelligent and insightful they are, but that it really it. I’m quite lonely.
From the OED: DRAFT ADDITIONS JUNE 2002
canon, n.1
Literary Criticism. A body of literary works traditionally regarded as the most important, significant, and worthy of study; those works of esp. Western literature considered to be established as being of the highest quality and most enduring value; the classics (now freq. in the canon). Also (usu. with qualifying word): such a body of literature in a particular language, or from a particular culture, period, genre, etc.
1929 Amer. Lit. 1 95 Those who read bits of Mather with pleasure will continue to feel that those bits cannot be excluded from the canon of literature until much excellent English ‘utilitarian’ prose is similarly excluded. 1953 W. R. TRASK tr. E. R. Curtius European Lit. & Lat. Middle Ages xiv. 264 Of the modern literatures, the Italian was the first to develop a canon. 1989 Times Lit. Suppl. 7 July 739 My Secret History..alludes to half the modernist canon, from Eliot to Hemingway to Henry Miller. 1999 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 4 Nov. 29/2 The canon was under attack from feminists and social historians who saw it as the preserve of male and bourgeois dominance.
To agree that the canon exists you do have to believe that some things are better than other things, but this doesn’t make it exclusive and it is actually the most inclusive thing i can imagine.
Again, the canon is a conversation, it is the conversation responsible for making civilization as it is today. I’ll make this distinction, I may not be using canon in the sense that it is colloquially or most often used or considered by the commons, but I am using it in its best and most useful sense — i.e. when some people say cow they really mean bull.
when some people say pony they really mean baby horse
Ryan:
“I wonder, if our current situation is “anti-canonical,” then how would you describe it? Are we writing ahistorically–completely set free from the literary achievements of the past?”
My long, long *opinion* (readers, please note that qualifier before strafing the thread)…:
Consumer-Empowered Specialization is what’s coming. The “conversation” of Lit will become super-fragmented, with every focus group developing its own (mercurial) canon.The rise of Genre Fiction demands it (eg, Sci Fi is a powerhouse of influence which cuts across almost every demographic). There’s a cultural militancy you get with consumer empowerment. It won’t be long before very few college-level readers are willing to go through with the pretense of reading “What Maisie Knew” when “Riddley Walker” exerts a much stronger pull and is written with as much finesse and insight (in the opinions of some fairly bright people).
Higher Ed has to follow the money: if the Humanities are going to remain viable, and The System isn’t much worried about the socio-political ramifications, things will go that way. I’m not saying that “canonical” works will vanish, but they will go the way of Latin and Greek: there if you take the trouble to find it. Maybe there can be some compensatory exposure to “the classics” in High School. But, seriously: ever wonder what happened to the subjects of Latin and Greek as non-elective courses? (my maternal grandfather was required to take them, my father was not).
Thousands of demographically-sculpted micro-canons might be healthier for Lit, in the end: people with aesthetic common-ground can debate more fruitfully than gladiators do in the bloody, pointless, Apples and Oranges Arena (Yeah: I know whereof I speak). There’s a big hunt on, at the moment, for that Magical Taxonomy that will *impose* the “common ground” that The Canon used to seem to provide, but it won’t be found; not ever. The solution is “non-linear” (as they used to say): group the Lit-lovers according to Taste.
People tend to “seek their own kind”… it was always a mistake to think that that really had so much to do with Race or Class or Gender. A poor white Gay fan of Game X has more in common with a rich black straight fan of Game X than she does with a poor white Gay fan of Game Z…. on lots of emotional and intellectual levels.
Part of the “correction” of an unselfconscious post-Canon reality, I’m hoping, will be the demise of “Identity Lit”… Blacks reading about Blacks, Women about Women, Queer Hispanic Women reading about Queer Hispanic Women and so forth. That kind of thing defeats one of the great possibilities of Lit: the internal discovery Unknown, Alternative Selves in the Author’s Mind. We’re squandering that Liberation for the familiar comforts of Narcissism, imo… it’s a misstep of post-canon-reality.
Some would argue that this hyper-balkanization, of Literary Studies, I’m describing, will lead to Cultural Hierarchy on a terrible scale, but I think it will lead to some *clarity*… and it’s not as though the hierarchy will work out in obvious ways (I think, for example, that “American Gods” or “Riddley Walker” will attract more kids with High IQs than a “canonical” work like the idiotic “Henderson The Rain King”).
We should fight for a government-supported, one-size-fits-all system of social justice and just-economics, but, fuck… let the culture “market” correct itself organically. And the first step in that correction (which we took a log time ago) was the death of The Canon.
We don’t need “The Canon” to talk about books.
Ha ha! Cool. Got my own little tribute band going…
Oh shit, that link features cock-sucking! Tony, you rascal! Is that why it didn’t work out with wife #2…?
Steve,
thanks for the awesome response! I’m starting to think we’re not all that far apart on this. . . think I was just confused by some of your earlier statements. Pragmatically I think the “canon” is whatever works people have found to be consistently useful or inspiring, to the point that they don’t slip into historical oblivion. I personally believe that much of this process–the consistent usefulness/inspiration bit–manifests itself subtly and somewhat subconsciously, as certain works embed themselves into us and become inevitable parts of our own creative work. (Assuming, of course, that the work is original enough that you can actually detect this sort of thing in it, since unoriginal work is so generic that it’s like melted peanut butter in your hands.) I can see how that’s not something everyone buys, as I think my Romantic inclinations can be somewhat severe.
I think micro-canons are probably already a reality. In fact right now I think we have micro-canons within “mega”-canons. . .
Didn’t even notice the longer debate above. Looks like good reading! Thanks, all.
Intelligent talk about Lit makes all the juvenile bullshit totally worth it
From the OED: DRAFT ADDITIONS JUNE 2002
canon, n.1
Literary Criticism. A body of literary works traditionally regarded as the most important, significant, and worthy of study; those works of esp. Western literature considered to be established as being of the highest quality and most enduring value; the classics (now freq. in the canon). Also (usu. with qualifying word): such a body of literature in a particular language, or from a particular culture, period, genre, etc.
1929 Amer. Lit. 1 95 Those who read bits of Mather with pleasure will continue to feel that those bits cannot be excluded from the canon of literature until much excellent English ‘utilitarian’ prose is similarly excluded. 1953 W. R. TRASK tr. E. R. Curtius European Lit. & Lat. Middle Ages xiv. 264 Of the modern literatures, the Italian was the first to develop a canon. 1989 Times Lit. Suppl. 7 July 739 My Secret History..alludes to half the modernist canon, from Eliot to Hemingway to Henry Miller. 1999 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 4 Nov. 29/2 The canon was under attack from feminists and social historians who saw it as the preserve of male and bourgeois dominance.
To agree that the canon exists you do have to believe that some things are better than other things, but this doesn’t make it exclusive and it is actually the most inclusive thing i can imagine.
Again, the canon is a conversation, it is the conversation responsible for making civilization as it is today. I’ll make this distinction, I may not be using canon in the sense that it is colloquially or most often used or considered by the commons, but I am using it in its best and most useful sense — i.e. when some people say cow they really mean bull.
when some people say pony they really mean baby horse
The image of the Canon fragmenting into micro-canons leaves me with two questions.
a) Will each micro-canon, or most of them, be infected with the virus of Dogmatic Authority?
What many people have argued – and acted – against in institutional expressions of ‘the Canon’ is the imposition of an elite-making consensus which is not reflective of somewhat-independently reached judgements, but rather is a consensus of the already-elite, a reproductive organ of an order not of authentic response, but rather of pre-existing social power.
It’s not that a relativistic ‘no elite’ is an option – in any particular sphere of individual taste, I don’t think it is – . Rather, this question for micro-canons is whether, from within the perspectives each of their formations privileges (political-economic, ethnic, and so on), they’re more discovered or more imposed.
b) Will some work persist in appearing in almost every micro-canon (exclusive of those dependent on the identity of their authors)?
To go to the most obvious suspect, are their (m)any micro-canons that would not see Shakespeare becoming one of their most referred-to texts? their most useful, most loved texts? Feminist investigation, queer theory, post-colonial or neo-colonial subjection, and so on: why wouldn’t you turn to one of a dozen of Shakespeare’s plays to explore the issues of power, solidarity, and so on in some particular micro-canon? – because you don’t think his dramatic poetry presents your problematic usefully? or because you don’t think his poetry is written beautifully enough to spend time with? really?
You see the question: if the mega-canon really disintegrates into perspective-privileging micro-canons, will – do – those micro-canons share, acknowledged or not, a meta-canon? – which would be, in effect if not expression, . . . a Canon.
Ryan:
“I wonder, if our current situation is “anti-canonical,” then how would you describe it? Are we writing ahistorically–completely set free from the literary achievements of the past?”
My long, long *opinion* (readers, please note that qualifier before strafing the thread)…:
Consumer-Empowered Specialization is what’s coming. The “conversation” of Lit will become super-fragmented, with every focus group developing its own (mercurial) canon.The rise of Genre Fiction demands it (eg, Sci Fi is a powerhouse of influence which cuts across almost every demographic). There’s a cultural militancy you get with consumer empowerment. It won’t be long before very few college-level readers are willing to go through with the pretense of reading “What Maisie Knew” when “Riddley Walker” exerts a much stronger pull and is written with as much finesse and insight (in the opinions of some fairly bright people).
Higher Ed has to follow the money: if the Humanities are going to remain viable, and The System isn’t much worried about the socio-political ramifications, things will go that way. I’m not saying that “canonical” works will vanish, but they will go the way of Latin and Greek: there if you take the trouble to find it. Maybe there can be some compensatory exposure to “the classics” in High School. But, seriously: ever wonder what happened to the subjects of Latin and Greek as non-elective courses? (my maternal grandfather was required to take them, my father was not).
Thousands of demographically-sculpted micro-canons might be healthier for Lit, in the end: people with aesthetic common-ground can debate more fruitfully than gladiators do in the bloody, pointless, Apples and Oranges Arena (Yeah: I know whereof I speak). There’s a big hunt on, at the moment, for that Magical Taxonomy that will *impose* the “common ground” that The Canon used to seem to provide, but it won’t be found; not ever. The solution is “non-linear” (as they used to say): group the Lit-lovers according to Taste.
People tend to “seek their own kind”… it was always a mistake to think that that really had so much to do with Race or Class or Gender. A poor white Gay fan of Game X has more in common with a rich black straight fan of Game X than she does with a poor white Gay fan of Game Z…. on lots of emotional and intellectual levels.
Part of the “correction” of an unselfconscious post-Canon reality, I’m hoping, will be the demise of “Identity Lit”… Blacks reading about Blacks, Women about Women, Queer Hispanic Women reading about Queer Hispanic Women and so forth. That kind of thing defeats one of the great possibilities of Lit: the internal discovery Unknown, Alternative Selves in the Author’s Mind. We’re squandering that Liberation for the familiar comforts of Narcissism, imo… it’s a misstep of post-canon-reality.
Some would argue that this hyper-balkanization, of Literary Studies, I’m describing, will lead to Cultural Hierarchy on a terrible scale, but I think it will lead to some *clarity*… and it’s not as though the hierarchy will work out in obvious ways (I think, for example, that “American Gods” or “Riddley Walker” will attract more kids with High IQs than a “canonical” work like the idiotic “Henderson The Rain King”).
We should fight for a government-supported, one-size-fits-all system of social justice and just-economics, but, fuck… let the culture “market” correct itself organically. And the first step in that correction (which we took a log time ago) was the death of The Canon.
We don’t need “The Canon” to talk about books.
Ha ha! Cool. Got my own little tribute band going…
Oh shit, that link features cock-sucking! Tony, you rascal! Is that why it didn’t work out with wife #2…?
Steve,
thanks for the awesome response! I’m starting to think we’re not all that far apart on this. . . think I was just confused by some of your earlier statements. Pragmatically I think the “canon” is whatever works people have found to be consistently useful or inspiring, to the point that they don’t slip into historical oblivion. I personally believe that much of this process–the consistent usefulness/inspiration bit–manifests itself subtly and somewhat subconsciously, as certain works embed themselves into us and become inevitable parts of our own creative work. (Assuming, of course, that the work is original enough that you can actually detect this sort of thing in it, since unoriginal work is so generic that it’s like melted peanut butter in your hands.) I can see how that’s not something everyone buys, as I think my Romantic inclinations can be somewhat severe.
I think micro-canons are probably already a reality. In fact right now I think we have micro-canons within “mega”-canons. . .
Didn’t even notice the longer debate above. Looks like good reading! Thanks, all.
Intelligent talk about Lit makes all the juvenile bullshit totally worth it
The image of the Canon fragmenting into micro-canons leaves me with two questions.
a) Will each micro-canon, or most of them, be infected with the virus of Dogmatic Authority?
What many people have argued – and acted – against in institutional expressions of ‘the Canon’ is the imposition of an elite-making consensus which is not reflective of somewhat-independently reached judgements, but rather is a consensus of the already-elite, a reproductive organ of an order not of authentic response, but rather of pre-existing social power.
It’s not that a relativistic ‘no elite’ is an option – in any particular sphere of individual taste, I don’t think it is – . Rather, this question for micro-canons is whether, from within the perspectives each of their formations privileges (political-economic, ethnic, and so on), they’re more discovered or more imposed.
b) Will some work persist in appearing in almost every micro-canon (exclusive of those dependent on the identity of their authors)?
To go to the most obvious suspect, are their (m)any micro-canons that would not see Shakespeare becoming one of their most referred-to texts? their most useful, most loved texts? Feminist investigation, queer theory, post-colonial or neo-colonial subjection, and so on: why wouldn’t you turn to one of a dozen of Shakespeare’s plays to explore the issues of power, solidarity, and so on in some particular micro-canon? – because you don’t think his dramatic poetry presents your problematic usefully? or because you don’t think his poetry is written beautifully enough to spend time with? really?
You see the question: if the mega-canon really disintegrates into perspective-privileging micro-canons, will – do – those micro-canons share, acknowledged or not, a meta-canon? – which would be, in effect if not expression, . . . a Canon.
“To go to the most obvious suspect, are their (m)any micro-canons that would not see Shakespeare becoming one of their most referred-to texts?”
Oh, easily. Shakespeare is by no means the default pyramid-capper of every conceivable micro-canon. You’d be surprised (or would you?) at how many intelligent people with a serious investment in the written word have only encountered Shakespeare briefly (in High School) and will avoid those texts for the rest of their lives. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch of the imagination seeing Shakespeare relegated (by the end of this century, even) to the scholars’ attic (or basement) of English Studies. I re-read Orwell’s essay on Tolstoy’s pamphlet against Shakespeare just a few days ago (I have a nice old edition of Shooting An Elephant) and it’s good to be reminded that Shakespeare needs defending, too; he isn’t a “given” or a Universal Constant. And the whiff of defensive Anglophone Chauvinism in the Orwell essay is instructive, too.
“Feminist investigation, queer theory, post-colonial or neo-colonial subjection, and so on: why wouldn’t you turn to one of a dozen of Shakespeare’s plays to explore the issues of power, solidarity, and so on in some particular micro-canon? – because you don’t think his dramatic poetry presents your problematic usefully? or because you don’t think his poetry is written beautifully enough to spend time with? really?”
I don’t agree with the presumption that Shakespeare A) handles all of these issues better than any other writer or B) that his poetry is unquestionably beautiful in any *objective* sense. Shakespeare is a kind of singularity for being a pretty good one-stop-shop of Eng Lit (and a fixed midpoint, for us, in the arc of the language: not as alien as Chaucer, not as banal-familiar in his tongue as Whitman). But, setting up an opposition between Shakespeare on one scale and every other possible writer on Earth on the other, Will will only win if you sneak your heavy hand on his side of the balance. Which Anglophone-Chauvinists often do. I’m more excited by the plays (though not the novels) of Beckett, myself. Shakespeare is necessarily a child on the question of Post-Humanity and it happens to be a pressing issue.
The only “Genre” I’m good at (well, beside the Literary Fiction genre) is Sci Fi and it does well enough without very much Will. And people who say that Will is the precursor of every English text that came after are ignoring the fact that he stole or bought (or “recycled”) many (if not most) of his plots. WS is fine but putting him somewhere other than the very top of “The Canon” is one of the subtle and healthy (imo) revolutions the Micro Canons are good for.
PS I’m a Marlovian, in any case.
“To go to the most obvious suspect, are their (m)any micro-canons that would not see Shakespeare becoming one of their most referred-to texts?”
Oh, easily. Shakespeare is by no means the default pyramid-capper of every conceivable micro-canon. You’d be surprised (or would you?) at how many intelligent people with a serious investment in the written word have only encountered Shakespeare briefly (in High School) and will avoid those texts for the rest of their lives. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch of the imagination seeing Shakespeare relegated (by the end of this century, even) to the scholars’ attic (or basement) of English Studies. I re-read Orwell’s essay on Tolstoy’s pamphlet against Shakespeare just a few days ago (I have a nice old edition of Shooting An Elephant) and it’s good to be reminded that Shakespeare needs defending, too; he isn’t a “given” or a Universal Constant. And the whiff of defensive Anglophone Chauvinism in the Orwell essay is instructive, too.
“Feminist investigation, queer theory, post-colonial or neo-colonial subjection, and so on: why wouldn’t you turn to one of a dozen of Shakespeare’s plays to explore the issues of power, solidarity, and so on in some particular micro-canon? – because you don’t think his dramatic poetry presents your problematic usefully? or because you don’t think his poetry is written beautifully enough to spend time with? really?”
I don’t agree with the presumption that Shakespeare A) handles all of these issues better than any other writer or B) that his poetry is unquestionably beautiful in any *objective* sense. Shakespeare is a kind of singularity for being a pretty good one-stop-shop of Eng Lit (and a fixed midpoint, for us, in the arc of the language: not as alien as Chaucer, not as banal-familiar in his tongue as Whitman). But, setting up an opposition between Shakespeare on one scale and every other possible writer on Earth on the other, Will will only win if you sneak your heavy hand on his side of the balance. Which Anglophone-Chauvinists often do. I’m more excited by the plays (though not the novels) of Beckett, myself. Shakespeare is necessarily a child on the question of Post-Humanity and it happens to be a pressing issue.
The only “Genre” I’m good at (well, beside the Literary Fiction genre) is Sci Fi and it does well enough without very much Will. And people who say that Will is the precursor of every English text that came after are ignoring the fact that he stole or bought (or “recycled”) many (if not most) of his plots. WS is fine but putting him somewhere other than the very top of “The Canon” is one of the subtle and healthy (imo) revolutions the Micro Canons are good for.
PS I’m a Marlovian, in any case.
source: “one of their most referred-to texts”
Steven: “default pyramid-capper of every conceivable micro-cannon”; “the very top of ‘The Canon'”
–
source: “one of their […] most useful, most loved texts”; “his dramatic poetry presents [most] problematic[s] usefully” (asked rhetorically)
Steven: “the presumption that Shakespeare […] handles all these issues better than any other writer”; “the precursor of every English text that came after”
–
source: “his poetry is written beautifully enough to spend time with” (asked rhetorically)
Steven: “the presumption […] that his poetry is unquestionably beautiful in any ‘objective’ sense”
–
source: “why wouldn’t you turn to one of a dozen of Shakespeare’s plays to explore the issues […] in some particular micro-canon” (asked rhetorically)
Steven: “an opposition between Shakespeare on one scale and every other possible writer on Earth on the other”
—
That’s quite a Straw Infantry you’ve hyper bowled, Steven.
Tolstoy’s dismissal of Shakespeare – on the evidence of King Lear’s failure to enact a ‘realistic’ family catastrophe – is interesting to the extent that it shines light on the artist Tolstoy. To me, not so much light shined on Lear or its writer.
No, Shakespeare’s neither a “‘given'” nor a “universal constant”. This assertion remains less “easily” demolished by a specious relativism: many (I think: most) micro-canons – like feminism, sexuality, race, and so on – will share a handful of still-Canonical figures – like Shakespeare – .
(It’s true that Canon familiarity is much less successfully to-be-assumed among, say, university graduates than it was a hundred years ago. It’s also true that a micro-canon, like a Canon, is a consensus, not a unanimity, that it admits intrinsically – contra Bloomhard – of contest and change. Still think that most Perfessers teaching a list designed to provoke response from a micro-canonical perspective like, say, gender oppression would “easily” work with one of twenty Shakespeare plays – rational scope DISCLAIMER: along with many other usefully excellent texts.)
–
Sci-fi is a good challenge. Of course – also an unfair challenge, in that, as a kind of fiction with its own micro-canons, it post-dates Shakespeare (an exact contemporary of Galileo) and his contemporaries and predecessors. (Keeping in mind that a machine in literature is not evidence of science fiction, right?)
But – setting aside Perfessers and course lists – , a reader interested in sci-fi is likely interested in the category ‘science’. ‘What is science?’ and ‘what is this species of knowledge not; what is “science” (as it were) against?’
One way of understanding what ‘science’ negates or revolutionizes or transforms is by counterposing it to magic. Do you see how Shakespeare, who wrote no ‘science fiction’, might be a useful figure in thinking about – or actually writing! – sci-fi? how a micro-canon of sci-fi, without including a Shakespeare play, would “do well” to be illuminated by a consideration of Macbeth or The Tempest?
For me, John Webster is da man. Duchess of Malfi & The White Devil.
Steven, what do you mean by “Marlovian”? You love reading his “high astounding terms”? Or you think he was the Swan, and you’re setting yourself apart from Stratfordians, Baconians, and Oxfordians (and anyone else who could have called herself or himself “Shakespeare”)?
Steven means that he is a character created by Christopher Marlowe.
source: “one of their most referred-to texts”
Steven: “default pyramid-capper of every conceivable micro-cannon”; “the very top of ‘The Canon'”
–
source: “one of their […] most useful, most loved texts”; “his dramatic poetry presents [most] problematic[s] usefully” (asked rhetorically)
Steven: “the presumption that Shakespeare […] handles all these issues better than any other writer”; “the precursor of every English text that came after”
–
source: “his poetry is written beautifully enough to spend time with” (asked rhetorically)
Steven: “the presumption […] that his poetry is unquestionably beautiful in any ‘objective’ sense”
–
source: “why wouldn’t you turn to one of a dozen of Shakespeare’s plays to explore the issues […] in some particular micro-canon” (asked rhetorically)
Steven: “an opposition between Shakespeare on one scale and every other possible writer on Earth on the other”
—
That’s quite a Straw Infantry you’ve hyper bowled, Steven.
Tolstoy’s dismissal of Shakespeare – on the evidence of King Lear’s failure to enact a ‘realistic’ family catastrophe – is interesting to the extent that it shines light on the artist Tolstoy. To me, not so much light shined on Lear or its writer.
No, Shakespeare’s neither a “‘given'” nor a “universal constant”. This assertion remains less “easily” demolished by a specious relativism: many (I think: most) micro-canons – like feminism, sexuality, race, and so on – will share a handful of still-Canonical figures – like Shakespeare – .
(It’s true that Canon familiarity is much less successfully to-be-assumed among, say, university graduates than it was a hundred years ago. It’s also true that a micro-canon, like a Canon, is a consensus, not a unanimity, that it admits intrinsically – contra Bloomhard – of contest and change. Still think that most Perfessers teaching a list designed to provoke response from a micro-canonical perspective like, say, gender oppression would “easily” work with one of twenty Shakespeare plays – rational scope DISCLAIMER: along with many other usefully excellent texts.)
–
Sci-fi is a good challenge. Of course – also an unfair challenge, in that, as a kind of fiction with its own micro-canons, it post-dates Shakespeare (an exact contemporary of Galileo) and his contemporaries and predecessors. (Keeping in mind that a machine in literature is not evidence of science fiction, right?)
But – setting aside Perfessers and course lists – , a reader interested in sci-fi is likely interested in the category ‘science’. ‘What is science?’ and ‘what is this species of knowledge not; what is “science” (as it were) against?’
One way of understanding what ‘science’ negates or revolutionizes or transforms is by counterposing it to magic. Do you see how Shakespeare, who wrote no ‘science fiction’, might be a useful figure in thinking about – or actually writing! – sci-fi? how a micro-canon of sci-fi, without including a Shakespeare play, would “do well” to be illuminated by a consideration of Macbeth or The Tempest?
For me, John Webster is da man. Duchess of Malfi & The White Devil.
Steven, what do you mean by “Marlovian”? You love reading his “high astounding terms”? Or you think he was the Swan, and you’re setting yourself apart from Stratfordians, Baconians, and Oxfordians (and anyone else who could have called herself or himself “Shakespeare”)?
Steven means that he is a character created by Christopher Marlowe.