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This thread is a continuation of a sub-argument to the thread here about possible plans by the Bush admin to effectively outlaw from the public domain, in Section 28-tastic stylee, any material deemed to promote the acceptability of homosexuality.
As a related tangent, eddie thirteen mentioned that although obviously this approach is not how it should be done, ze believes that there is certainly room for improvement in the canon generally taught in American Literature classes in the US:
I... stop short of suggesting that every work of art currently taught in our universities is there for the sole purpose of teaching students work on its own intrinsic merits. PC is still with us.
I'm personally not entirely sure that the sole criteria for choosing books to teach should be their quality, even if this could be objectively determined, and replied:
Surely part of the aim behind such courses should be to educate about a variety of lifestyles in cultures? Even if the short story from which you've quoted above could be objectively judged as being of lower quality than the white American or British options available, could it not be of more value for students to learn about the unique set of perspectives and values portrayed in that short story than to read one more story from the same old cultural background?
... To which eddie responded:
No, the point of an American literature class is not to teach students about cultural diversity; the point of a cultural diversity class is to teach students about cultural diversity. I'm not saying that teaching cultural diversity is bad or unnecessary -- I would argue that it's crucial. But it's not what a broad American lit class is there for. If you want to teach Cultural Diversity in American Lit, go for it...no problems from this quarter. But let's not confuse it with an overall survey of American literature. Such a course gives an instructor twelve weeks or so to teach stories and poems from the Puritans on, and frankly, that's not much time. Mediocrity included in the name of cultural diversity is still just mediocrity, and why waste valuable class hours on it?
The second (more relevant) point, to my mind, is that the quoted story is not merely taking up space that could be occupied by worthier white writers, but by worthier writers of color. But because we "need" this particular token more than we "need," say, another story by an American writer of black or Asian heritage -- or even a less political story by a different Native American writer -- a better story is squeezed out on the basis of political conviction.
What I'm saying is that, if a story is taken strictly on its own merits, there WILL BE cultural diversity -- because good writers don't all just happen to be of European descent. We know better than that. Setting out to create cultural diversity has academics making decisions that don't necessarily have much to do with quality, when -- and this is the thing -- if they were to judge work simply on the basis of quality, we'd almost certainly still have work by writers from a wide variety of racial/cultural backgrounds. They just might not be all the same writers we have now.
While the latter point may perhaps be pertinent, I am a) still not entirely sure this would be the case, and b) still not convinced of the theoretical argument still being maintained: that the sole determinant of what should be taught is the "quality" of the work.
Expanding on point a) : I've not read everything in the history of American literature, so I'm not qualified to make judgements on quality. However, there are certainly reasons why this (the idea that deriving the canon from judgements of quality would result in perfectly equal representation) might not be the case. Even now, there's a long way to go to complete equality in America, and historically, minorities of all kinds have had less access to education and, writing often being a pursuit of those with leisure time to spare, less opportunity to write. Also, I believe some minorities have rather less of a "writing history"; as far as I'm aware, writing has not historically been such a large part of Native American culture as it has been for white Americans.
With regards to point b) above, dizfactor wrote:
who decides what's "mediocre" and what's not? you?
and do you seriously think issues of race and class and culture don't come tied up in that? there's no objective way to determine what's "good" and what's "mediocre," since those judgements are inherently subjective, and evaluations of the "quality" of a given work are generally deeply related to the culture of the artist. in an academic environment dominated by white people, someone who writes in a style which appeals to educated white people is going to be understood to be producing "quality" work more often than someone whose style appeals to uneducated white people or educated Latinos.
there's really no such thing as "quality" in the broad, objective sense, and a basic American literature class should ideally try to expose students to as wide a sampling of American writing as possible, to familiarize them with a variety of genres, styles, races, genders, geographical areas, and time periods.
... To which the reply from eddie was:
When we start moving down this track (white people are incapable of recognizing good work from outside "white" culture), what we're doing in essence is choosing to believe that the evidence of our own mental processes is in some way deficient, and so we *can't* make a value judgment...a notion which I feel quite comfortable calling bullshit. First of all, we have to accept that there's this enormous gulf between "white" and "black" (or "Asian," "Native American," "Latino," etc.) culture in America -- despite the reality that black and white Americans do all live in the same culture, even if some of us would like to believe otherwise -- and second of all we have to accept that you can narrowly define "black" and "white" culture in the first place.
Most importantly, though, by determining that (presumably) white academics are incapable of judging the merits of a minority writer, we presume that a minority writer's work must by necessity be so different from that of a white writer that it's as if the minority is from a different planet altogether; it falls upon the academic merely to catalog it, not to interpret it, as this is clearly beyond his ken. It's hard for me to decide who's insulted more by this theory -- the academic who, because of his/her ethnicity, is incapable of "getting" literature when it's written by a person of a different race; or the minority writer who, because of his/her ethnicity, is incapable of producing work that can communicate to people outside his/her culture.
As for "who decides" -- well, the truth is, SOMEONE has to decide, don't they? Every course needs a syllabus. It sounds as if the notion rankles, but I don't see any other way to teach a class -- someone has to choose this book over that one. It sounds like what we disagree on is the criteria for selection. Yours has more to do with who the writers are and where they come from than with what they've written and how well they've done it, and I find that disturbing. If we propose that there is no way to tell good work from bad work, then we may as well not teach literature courses at all.
Further, we suggest a level of subjectivity in art observation of any kind that I just don't believe in. What you and I get from reading a work of fiction will, by necessity, differ; but for you and I each to have an *utterly* different experience implies one (or, I guess, both) of us is suffering a severe derangement of the senses. So -- subjectivity, yes; total subjectivity, though, I think is about as plausible as total objectivity.
I think that to talk of "the reality that black and white Americans do all live in the same culture, even if some of us would like to believe otherwise" seems a bit naive; yes, they live in the same country, but there are cultural differences between all sections of society, and living in the same country is experienced differently by black and white people, by rich and poor, by male and female, by gay and straight... and generally, the best description and impression of a particular culture will come from someone who actually lives in that culture.
I would also argue that it actually *is* impossible to compare literature from different sections of society as though it's comparing like with like; different cultures have different priorities, different standards and, accordingly, their literature should be judged by different standards, and is likely to contain their own unique merits.
I still maintain that the purpose of an American literature course (and this thread is, of course, also open to British literature, or... well, any literature course teaching literature local to the country in which it is taught) is not to ensure that students are exposed to only the "very highest quality" literature, but to enable them to understand and interpret literature better. In my mind, they are better placed to do this if taught literature from as wide a variety of cultures as possible.
(Apologies for the inevitable length of this first post caused by endless quotes.)
So... any thoughts? |
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