“Contingencies and Intersections: The Formation of Pedagogical Canons” Susan V. Gallagher
Winter 2001
Canon = refers to a collection of rules or texts that are considered to be authoritative. Shakespeare and Chaucer are part of the canon of Western literature, so you might read their work in an English class.
“Should college or university literature courses include noncanonical or only canonical authors?… Should we thoughtfully expand or completely eliminate the canon?” (p 53).
“…’imaginary canon’–imaginary in that there is no specifically defined body of works or authors that make up such a canon” (p 53).
Works considered “great” or “classic”
John Guillory: “What does have a concrete location as a list, then, is not the canon but the syllabus…the list of works one reads in a given class, or the curriculum…” (p 54)
Distinction between imaginary canon and the syllabus.
Gallagher names this the “pedagogical canon” (texts taught in college/university settings).
“…canon formation is an imprecise process” (p 54).
John Alberti “…acknowledges that college syllabi have undergone radical transformations in the past twenty years, with many women and minority writers now included, but he fears that these texts are often taught only by means of New Critical strategies of close reading rather than from a critical perspective that highlight the way social, ethnic, and gender positions construct aesthetic and cultural value” (p 55).
Guillory argues that you cannot eliminate the canon, because by building syllabi and book lists, the canon is constantly being renewed and recreated anyway (p 56).
Gallagher believes there are three ways in which pedagogical canons are formed, and uses Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions as a case study.
First means of forming a pedagogical canon: material conditions
Christopher Miller “…has noted the way in which the African literary canon is more crucially linked to the material conditions governing publication…Due to economic and educational scarcities, there is little to no market of general readers in Africa” (p 57).
When Dangarembga first attemped to publish Nervous Conditions in Zimbabwe, the publishing house was uninterested. She brought the manuscript to the same publishing house that released The Color Purple (Women’s Press), and was invited to their London office. Women’s Press quickly obtained American rights to publish it in the US.
Without Dangarembga advocating for her work and sending it to another publishing house, the book may not have been well read and placed on so many syllabi. Publication itself is necessary for a work to become part of a pedagogical canon. Sometimes networking is as well.
Nervous Conditions was heavily purchased by the academic market.
Second means of forming a pedagogical canon: professional structures (p 59)
Conferences, journal publications, book exhibits, and lectures
Gallagher discovered Nervous Conditions at an MLA convention while browsing book exhibits. She ended up chatting with a professor from an African university.
She loved the book and went on to use it in her own courses, and even presented a paper on the novel’s canonical features at the MLA convention in 1996.
“Such networking, mentoring, and advocacy has conveyed Nervous Conditions into the pedagogical canon in less than one decade of its publication” (p 59).
“The unusual publishing history of Nervous Conditions demonstrates in somewhat exaggerated terms the complex relationship among material conditions, accidental encounters, disciplinary practices, and value-laden choices” (p 60).
“The construction of a syllabus begins with selection…it does not begin with a ‘process of elimination'” (p 61).
Third means of forming a pedagogical canon: ideology, aesthetics, representation, teachability
Nervous Conditions deals with a wide range of issues, though the ideological focus of the novel is often on it’s feminist themes.
“Canon construction and reformation, Kaplan and Rose argue, depend to a great extent on ‘the oscillation between the needs and desires of the common reader and the ideological interests of a cultural/academic elite'” (p 63).
Kaplan and Rose: “Most of us read books with this question in our mind: What does this say about my life?” (p 63).
There is a balance between selecting books that will be relatable and understandable to students, while still exposing them to topics and themes that may be very foreign to them.
Satya Mohanty “We can understand bot differences and commonalities adequately only when we approach particular cross-cultural disputes in an open-ended way…. Where, notwithstanding differences in language or conceptual framework, there is at least a partial overlap…” (p 64).
Reading novels written by people from different cultures than our own can greatly expand our understanding of that culture while simultaneously helping us understand ourselves. While humans all around the world face very different life circumstances (depending on religion, language, climate, cultural values, food, gender roles, violence/war, etc. etc.), within these sets of circumstances are widely relatable feelings or ideas. For example, all humans wonder what our purpose is (either as an individual or a collective). All humans struggle with loneliness, insecurity, fear, disappointment, betrayal in relationships, the difficulty of becoming and adult and building ones own family. There are endless other examples. My point is that, novels that focus on different cultures (especially if they are as well written as This Mournable Body) allow readers to better understand and respect the other culture (and that it might be very different from their own) while still being constantly reminded that humans, despite how greatly our experiences differ, are extremely relatable all around the world.
Inclusion of multicultural literature in syllabi shouldn’t be seen as an attack on older, more Western literature that’s always been taught in schools. I thinking expanding the pedagogical canon should be the goal, not limiting it. And it shouldn’t be reduced to “virtue signaling” or “political correctness” if the novels are well written and thematically complex enough to study in a classroom setting.
I think because of the pedagogical canon that has been in place so long (mainly filled by middle class, straight, white men in America or England), there is a tendency to assume that this type of person is a “default” character, or a “blank slate” identity that allows for a literary story to be told without the distraction of “identity.” But of course, middle-class, straight, white male is a type of identity that carries it’s own assumptions and stereotypes. I think the reason for this is is because this type of person was the only type of person allowed to engage in academics for a long time, and many of the characters we’re asked to analyze in classes have this identity. I’m not sure how to wrap this point up concisely, yet, it’s just an idea/observation.
