Multiculturalism, Censorship, and the Postmodern Assault on the Canon: Classical Answers to Contemporary Dilemmas

MULTICULTURALISM, CENSORSHIP, AND THE POSTMODERN ASSAULT ON THE CANON: CLASSICAL ANSWERS TO CONTEMPORARY DILEMMAS Jeanne J. Smoot If we accept the simple premise that what we read influences who we are, then curricular matters in general and the concept ofa canon in particular have profound political implications. Almost any dictator seeks to restrict what his subjects read, to control the flow of information, ideas, and philosophies. A free society, then, sustains itself by fostering an expansive and open canon. The idea ofa literary canon itselfsuggests standards, the upholding or at least the respect for excellence in writing, creative expression, and dynamic ideas. The elasticity of this canon insures freedom, the ventilation of opposing ideas, and the development of new ways of thinking. James Madison makes a similar argument in Federalist Paper No. 10 to support, not the idea of an open canon, but democratic government and the need for factions in a free society. Ironically today the notion of a canon is under attack from the very institution that in the past has been its primary incubator, the academy. Even more ironic, the canon is often under siege in the name of multiculturalism , which at its best should promote respect for all cultures and awareness of cultural differences. What passes for multiculturalism today , however, is sometimes a relentless assault on Western civilization. John Ellis, in Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities, sees the race-gender-class critics, as he calls them, actually increasing divisiveness in postmodern society by focusing on the victim /victimizer paradigm. Ellis holds that such critics also harm literary study by selecting texts based on their ability to support particular social and political aims. So concerned was Ellis that literature was being neglected in favor of political and social agendas that he and others formed the Association ofLiterary Scholars and Critics (ALSC), an international group, in 1994. While the ALSCs main purpose is to provide a forum for study and exchange for all those who value good literature (its members include classicists, literature professors and teachers of all types, creative writers, critics, editors, and people from other professions who simply have a love of the Word), the group also is concerned with fostering a climate in which good literature can flourish. For this reason, the ALSC has taken a closer look at what is actually being taught in the name of multiculturalism. The results, far from the respect for all cultures that one might have expected, are often deeply disturbing. One of the ways the ALSC, which is mainly composed of US members , discerns the effect of some elements of multicultural studies is to ask its members to look at something so simple and seemingly benign as standards used to certify secondary school teachers in the fifty US states. While the ALSC saw much to praise, citing the California English language arts standards draft report as a particularly fine example of an Vol. 24 (2000): 30 ??? COMVAnATIST evenhanded document that upholds the primacy ofliterature and refers to "universal themes in significant works ofAmerican, British and world literature," the association was critical of the standards manual put out by the Texas State Board of Education, for example. The fall 1997 issue of the ALSC Newsletter noted what it saw as the deleterious effect of race-gender-class specialists on Texas certification standards. "Among the few authors mentioned, much space is devoted to Toni Morrison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Längsten Hughes, and N. Scott Momaday, but none to, for example, Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Dickens, or Twain." (ALSC Newsletter 8). Perhaps the drafters of the Texas manual felt the authors they were highlighting had been underrepresented in the past or would be in the future. But public documents, at least in the United States, have a way ofbecoming standards, especially if they are written as guidance for certification; and the privileging ofwriters like Morrison, Hughes, and Momaday has the net effect ofdiminishing or perhaps even eliminating such giants as Shakespeare and Mark Twain. Instead of incorporating more recent canonical authors, such as Hughes and Brooks, into its curriculum in the way canon formation should work, the Texas document insinuates antagonisms. As the Newsletter noted, the state manual...