Listen: everything published before a certain date? WAS inherently bound up in The Establishment, because The Establishment *is literally what decided who was allowed to have a voice in the first fucking place*. The Canon didn't just APPEAR out of thin, culturally neutral air!
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The fact that The Canon is still seen as such is habit, and one we enforce precisely because we're unwilling to admit the extent to which it was shaped by the pressures of racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, Anglocentrism, homophobia, ableism - all that jazz.
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What drives me absolutely nuts is the continued conflation of what might benefit *individual authors* wanting to write a certain thing and what is of benefit *to readers and literary culture generally* - to whit:
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While individual authors might well improve their writing by learning from older works, IT DOESN'T FOLLOW THAT A READER'S EXPERIENCE MUST ALSO BE IMPROVED BY DOING THE SAME THING. But when schools teach The Canon above all, they're not helping writers. They're training READERS -
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- and that training is twofold, and applies whether consciously or unconsciously delivered: firstly, to instill the idea that only a certain type of writing is Worthy Of Study in the first place; and secondly, to cement that canon as the readers' baseline for What Has Merit.
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In other words: you consistently teach diverse, modern classes about The Same Dead White Dudes (And Maybe One White Lady), the cultural takeaway isn't that all those writers had fascinating things to say, however true (or not) that might be: it's that Only White Authors Matter.
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And not just Only White Authors, but only white authors from a given time, even! Do you know how many kids turn away from reading in their teens because they're being forced to slog through books with zero relevance to them in the name of preserving The Sanctity Of Canon?
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Listen: teenage!me was a full on Shakespeare nerd and even I loathed the way we were taught his work in school, because it meant sitting through class after class where my peers, through disconnection & frustration, were taught to hate something I loved, impacting my own passion.
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So when Cluess talks about needing to know The Canon in order to write new classics, what we need to be asking is: cui bono? Who benefits? Who set the canon under what conditions, and why does preserving it matter so much, and to which people?
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In terms of modern genre conventions, it absolutely makes sense for writers to have a sense for their field, the better to situtate themselves or their work within it. But this does NOT mean reading The Canon unless they want to, because The Canon IS NOT THE LIVING GENRE. PERIOD.
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When modern classics DO come along, it's not because those writers specifically sat down, did their homework on The Canon and wrote with that as their starting point better than anyone else. It's often because, in fact, they said, "nah, fuck that," and did their OWN thing -
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- which might sometimes put them in *conversation* with The Canon, but not always! Or if that link can be made, it doesn't have to be intentional! Readers can pick up on links between texts that authors never think of. That's part of the magic of analysis, fandom & interpretation
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Jumping back on to add that, in listing all the things which impacted who was allowed to join The Canon (or even write at all) prior to a certain date, we need to be conscious that the bias within publishing hasn't magically gone away. For all that diversity is flourishing -
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- it's thanks to active pushback and monumental acts of will, most often by marginalised creators, who expend their time and energy making space for themselves and their peers within an industry that often, still, tries to push them out.
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(For an example of such bias, we need look no further than Cluess saying a WOC doesn't deserve her job as a teacher for daring to question The Canon and probe it for racism - a statement she then tries to gloss over by claiming Calm And Rational Concern For Literature
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Like far too many industries, publishing is very one step forward, two steps back when it comes to diversifying, which is why we can't rest on the non-existent laurels of Modern Publishing Is Fixed Now You Guys, Bias Only Happened In Ye Olden Dayes.
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