Canons: Damned If You Do and Damned If You Don't-A Response to Adam Kotsko
If only my students knew 'the canon' (any canon!) so when they came to my class we could start our conversations with a shared understanding of the literary tradition the XYZ writers engage, challenge and extend. David Damrosch, writing about trends in postcolonial literary studies which s...
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Veröffentlicht in: | Australian humanities review 2016-11 (60), p.N_A |
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Sprache: | eng |
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Zusammenfassung: | If only my students knew 'the canon' (any canon!) so when they came to my class we could start our conversations with a shared understanding of the literary tradition the XYZ writers engage, challenge and extend. David Damrosch, writing about trends in postcolonial literary studies which seem at odds with the roots of that field in a critique of the power wielded by canonical formations, proposes three kinds of canon: the hypercanon (celebrities), counter-canon (other writers widely known who are understood to pose alternatives to the hypercanon) and the shadow canon (texts people feel they should be able to say they have read, even though no one actually teaches or publishes on them). There's a difference between having a shared understanding of the powerful in order to teach (and mobilise) an analysis of power and a situation of 'canon confidential' in which the usual suspects are mysteriously at the centre. Most Australian university students have no idea who the traditional owners are of the lands on which they study (let alone the intellectual traditions and other significance of the place). |
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ISSN: | 1325-8338 1325-8338 |