Explode the Canon: How to Fight a Better Canon War

Matt Hoberg

Matt Hoberg earned an A.B. in Philosophy from Princeton University in 2009 and resides in Minnesota with his wife and four children in a 19th century farmhouse; these opinions are his own. You can find him on Twitter @kinder_cons and his Substack Kinder Conservative Bulletin.

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27 Responses

  1. Murali says:

    So, is Philosophy like Maths or Literature?

    Ideally, it ought to be like Maths. However, unlike maths, we have less theorem proving and more interminable discussions. My instinct here (since I am, self-consciously, analytic) is to divide the field into concrete problems and corresponding solution spaces. If done right, philosophy progresses by discovering certain problems and ruling out certain regions in the corresponding solution space.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Murali says:

      Philosophy is tricky. Literally, some of it looks like math and some like literature.

      I know that some Great Books colleges use classic math and science texts. I don’t get that, unless they’re built on a system that itself is considered valuable. With philosophy, you’ve got the problem that some of it is written terribly. There’s also the insights to sentences ratio that can be brutal.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    There is an essay variant out there that says something to the effect of “if you want to make the next Star Wars, *STOP WATCHING STAR WARS*.”

    The advice goes from there to how you should read Asimov, watch the old Buck Rogers serials, read The Once And Future King, watch Flash Gordon serials, watch The Ring of the Nibelung, watch The Fighting Devil Dogs, and watch every single movie that Akira Kurosawa ever made.

    “But I don’t have time for that!”

    Well, then you’re not going to make the next Star Wars. Settle for watching it instead.

    Same here for the canon. There is a lot of content out there that distills what came before. You don’t need to have watched The Hidden Fortress to enjoy Star Wars. Far from it!

    But if you want to understand how Star Wars was created in the hopes that you might create the next Star Wars, the secret isn’t in watching Star Wars. It’s in watching Yojimbo.

    So, too, for the canon. How much time do you have? Oh, not that much? Here. Just watch “What the (bleep) do we know?”Report

  3. dhex says:

    “Not because there are no objective standards for art— there are!— but because there is no good reason to think that works from diverse literary traditions and cultures can be ranked on a scale of value.”

    Doesn’t the latter statement here contradict the former?

    (FWIW I think the former statement is incorrect and the latter is true)Report

    • Murali in reply to dhex says:

      Doesn’t the latter statement here contradict the former?

      Not necessarily.

      The objective standards of art (whatever they are) may be so abstract and general that they can be realised in multiple ways. This does not mean that anything goes, only that there is a lot of room for local interpretations of these objective standards. Any sufficiently long-standing literary tradition and culture would have built up a sufficient corpus of art that meets their own local interpretation of the objective standards.

      By analogy, consider that karnatic music and western music each have their own set of scales and beats.

      Yet, they still have an octave structure. Even though the exact position of each note in the octave does not match i.e. there might not be an exact correspondence between the scales. Even if there is, which ones each tradition takes to be the more basic ones will differ. Yet there will still be this recognisable structureReport

      • dhex in reply to Murali says:

        that’s fair. but i’m thinking that if you’re assembling a canon, you need to appeal to ideas and concepts beyond “this is what’s culturally relevant now” (with an unspoken “to the influential parts of our group creating/reflecting this canon”). But even with that caveat you need some kind of yardstick to decide how to decide that, for example, “the analects are in, xyz texts are out” and so on. Be it eastern, western, african, middle eastern, etc literary/philosophical traditions.

        generally speaking, the folks who approach this seriously tend to find a thread of core concepts in which the authors of canonical texts are engaging with previous works in the canon “in conversation with each other”

        i can think of a dozen ways to construct a canon (and fewer that make it defensible, but they’re definitely there) but none which rise to the level i’d feel comfortable claiming as objective. to be fair, i cannot think of an objective criteria for art that makes sense in terms of how people actually consume art, despite my own very strongly held/completely correct views on the subject. 🙂

        FWIW, i don’t think you’ll find many people making a claim of objectivity beyond a small handful of people who are, most likely, neither engaged in pedagogy nor literary/historical/philosophical traditions, but rather hooked into the culture wars in either valorization or denunciation of the concept. they’re talking about their feelings about art, literature, and culture more than actually engaging in the question of canons/traditions.Report

    • Matt Hoberg in reply to dhex says:

      Just as a brief reply (this needs much more elaboration, of course)– I think standards for literature are largely tied to the context of the work (the small-c canon). So I think it makes sense to ask “What are the best British playwrights?” but little sense to ask “What’s better, Shakespeare or the Epic of Gilgamesh?”

      So there’s no universal ranking, but we can talk about what the best of various traditions is (according to their own standards).

      There might also be some universal, objective things we can say to compare works across canons– like how much did it influence the genre or history more broadly?– but those will be more judgments of history than literary judgments.

      Thanks for reading and commenting!Report

  4. Rufus F. says:

    I sort of think of the canon wars as a bit like grunge music- something from the 90s that most of us have moved on from. But, of course, this is represents my current environment more than anything. I’m not surrounded by people who read Marcus Aurelius or Averroes.

    It seems to me there are two critiques of the canon: the one is basically the critique you’re making and is, I think, fundamentally correct. To wit: why should we read the Arthurian legends or Ovid and call it “canon” and not the Shahnameh? There’s no real reason to avoid other traditions, aside from a sort of cultural chauvinism that passes itself off as sophistication. The Fake Smarts I call them. So, yes, the hell with them- let n thousand flowers bloom.

    The other critique of the canon goes something like: if you like watching Shakespeare performed and I prefer watching nothing but slasher movies, who are you to say your choice is better? It’s basically just the consumerist ideology passed off as a philosophy. Who are you to tell me eating fruits and vegetables is better than eating big macs every meal? Well, because you can brutalize your soul as surely as you can brutalize your body. And so why would you want to?

    And, you know, having lived in both worlds, I can say the reality is the rich kids are still getting told they need to understand Shakespeare and Cicero and Virginia Woolf, and that it’s good for them. The poor kids are the ones getting told that stuff isn’t for you. Whaddya want to waste your time with it for? And that, frankly, is as deep and brutal as classism runs.

    And, the sad reality is the majority of people we encounter will not read one book this year. Or a single book after school. Their life is not one of inwardness and, frankly, I can’t imagine it’s a happy one.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Rufus F. says:

      Shakespeare is an interesting choice here because while he is seen as a great artist by many today, a lot of stuff really was the Elizabethan equivalent of a movie. King Lear and Hamlet might be deep but Shakespeare also wrote a lot of crowd pleasers like Much Ado About Nothing. Titus Andronicus could even be seen as the late 16th century equivalent of a slasher movie.Report

      • Rufus F. in reply to LeeEsq says:

        Well, yeah and no… I mean, yes, like a movie in that they were popular entertainment, but like the really great movies, they wasn’t just that, or we wouldn’t be talking about them today. There are plenty of movies that are the same way- entertaining as heck and thematically rich enough that we’ll be talking about them in a hundred years. And then you have the stuff that is great to kill a few hours, but you hardly remember it the next day.

        The thing with slasher movies- and I will *definitely* watch a good slasher flick if I’m in the right mood- is that they were made *entirely* to make as much money as possible, while spending as little money as possible!

        Which, you know, makes them pretty dang entertaining, but also there was really no intention during the 80s slasher craze to be original or artistic or to deal with any human experience beyond Bad Man with Knife Go Stab. (Note: by “slasher” I mean after Halloween. That’s an extremely well-constructed suspense film, but nothing afterwards really came close.)Report

    • Matt Hoberg in reply to Rufus F. says:

      I like those points a lot, thank you for the comment!

      Definitely agree that there can be a class/income divide here, there’s a lot that could be done better to bring great works from multiple canons into classroom contexts to challenge children of all backgrounds and get them excited about literature and reading.Report

  5. Murali says:

    Well, because you can brutalize your soul as surely as you can brutalize your body.

    There’s the rub isn’t it? We know we have bodies. Our state of knowledge regarding souls is far less certain. If we are nothing but meat-sacks with appetites and beliefs, then there is nothing, in principle, which could “brutalize the soul” but there are things which could make the meat sack give out earlier (and thus lessen the fulfilment of said appetites.

    I’m also sure that there are certain social justice adjacent views which would tollens your ponens: Sure eating lots of big macs would make you fat, but what’s wrong with that?Report

    • Rufus F. in reply to Murali says:

      Right! And that gets at how we feel about each other and about students. If you’re the guy down the street and you want to eat nothing about big macs and it makes you sick, I don’t really care. But, if you’re someone I love, I might want you around longer and feeling healthier. My diet is better than it was in my 20s almost entirely due to women who loved me and wanted me to stop eating nothing but junk. At the time, it annoyed me! But, now, I recognize that as love.

      I think there’s an aspect of care, if not love, to teaching. I can’t say that great art and literature and philosophy have made my life better, but they’ve definitely made it more liveable. And so, it seems natural to want that for others, even if they ultimately leave school and never read another book.Report

  6. LeeEsq says:

    Canon is about what it means to be a well-educated member of your society. For the West, this meant that you needed at least some working knowledge of Ancient Greek and Latin and some passing familiarity with authors from antiquity like Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Homer, Virgil, Cicero, Livy, Euclid, and Pliny the Elder. If you lived in East Asia, you needed to know the Confucian canon. Jews had to possess knowledge of the Torah and the Talmud, Muslims the Qu’Ran and the Hadith, and Hindus the Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana, and other works. Buddhists had their own canon.A canon education was about creating an educated class that could communicate with itself.

    Determining what an educated person needs to know in the modern era is tough. Besides the fact that we are educated many more people than we did during the golden age of canon, nearly all of them can look irrelevant to many people while STEM does not; determining what needs to be rid in pluralistic liberal societies isn’t easy. Focusing too much on the classical canon excludes female authors or non-white authors. Determining which minorities get included though isn’t that clear cut either.Report

    • Pinky in reply to LeeEsq says:

      A couple of caveats though. The “Western canon” is usually referred to in that way, and its intention was to represent the central thoughts and works in Western culture. I don’t think there’s a case that any specific female writers were excluded from that list despite their influence. As for skin color, I know you yourself have commented on this being a changing standard, and the core of the Western canon is Jewish, Greek, and Italian, which isn’t the profile of those who compiled it.

      I do think there’s a good argument for prioritizing one’s language’s best writers, though.Report

  7. Greginak says:

    So much of the “Canon” is just what people were taught 50 years ago. The small c conservative view is that we just can’t change things so the Canon for young people must not change. That is never going to work nor should it. For one obvious reason 50 years ago print/literature was the primary constituent of the Canon. Why were other types of art typically excluded except for the richest folk? Prob lots of reasons for that. The obvious big change since then is how much media has changed to visual forms. A modern Canon should prob have a media literacy / visual story telling component if the goal is to educate kids enough to explore the world on their own.

    Fwiw/imho as a kid who took Phil classes in HS they were not at all useful pre reqs to understanding the world.Report

  8. jason says:

    Good post. I’m all for this: “Let’s explode the Canon and cultivate critical distance, opening up new vistas and leaving behind stale arguments.”
    However, I think one reason there are so many “canon wars” is that while it’s easy to expand the canon, it’s much, much harder to expand a syllabus. Some people seem to think adding new works overshadows old works. They may be right, but I don’t know that this is always a problem. I had several profs who loved _A Catcher in the Rye_, which fell flat for me; it’s a work that was important to a generation, I think, but not important to teach today. However, the question of what to teach, while important–especially to those teaching, shouldn’t distract us from reading, and reading the canon, is much more enjoyable outside of the classroom. It’s something we need to encourage more people to do, really.Report

    • Pinky in reply to jason says:

      Ah, yes. Lit that shocked 1950’s sentiments. I put Madame Bovary and Death of a Salesman in the same category,Report

    • CJColucci in reply to jason says:

      Syllabus expansion leads to such nonsense as the accusations by the usual suspects that Yale’s Art History Department adding a couple of 100-level courses, focusing on non-western art, reeked of, literally, “Stalinism.”Report

      • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

        Syllabus expansion is a way to sell new books.

        Sadly, there have not been a whole lot of advancements in pre-Raphaelite Art History. You can get away with using the same book from 2014. The only people who make money off of that are the bookstore people, not the profs and not the publishers.

        “Stalinism”? Ha! Demanding “Decolonizing Urban Graffiti Spaces 101” to replace those courses that are still using books that are 7 years old is pure, unadulterated Capitalism.Report

    • Matt Hoberg in reply to jason says:

      Definitely agree– if the question is really specific, like “What should every NYC freshman English student read”, it’s a tough balancing act because you can only read so many books. This might mean in some cases reading more short works instead of fewer long ones, or short stories/poetry/plays instead of primarily novels.

      Not an easy task to design a curriculum to meet these different demands, but I hope the line of thought I’m developing is at least a step in the right direction.Report

  9. Chris says:

    What are canons for?Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Chris says:

      Holy crap.

      This is the question, innit?

      I’d say that the quick and easy answer is that they’re genes.Report

      • Marchmaine in reply to Jaybird says:

        In intellectual history Canons are generally considered works which grapple (consciously or not) the previous work upon which they build. There’s an endless debate whether there’s a Meta-Canon of ‘Being’ where all Canons are really just a single Canon addressing timeless questions. I fall in the camp that says the Meta-Discussion is fruitless, because even if true, the Distinct Canons are themselves rational inquiries that cannot be discussed or defeated without reference to their internal Canons.

        So, there are always overlapping Canons depending upon the tradition of inquiry whence they come. Sometimes the Canons overlap, sometimes they don’t. It absolutely makes sense to identify a Canon in which your laws/ethics are building upon… lest you start having incommensurate Canon discussions… which, as you know, is the MacIntyre thesis writ large.

        It’s the fact that we can no longer identify the Canon which underpins our “Comparative Canoning” that is the problem. We all have a Canon… most of us are ignorant of it’s origin and boundaries… hence fruitless ‘aesthetic’ canon wars.

        But Canons? You can’t do Philosophy without Canons and, I’d argue, you can’t really do law either … until you settle the Canon via war, divorce or separation.

        [Ha!]Report

        • Chris in reply to Marchmaine says:

          I tend to think that canons are meant to collect and classify the texts that underlie or shape a common cultural or narrative tradition. Under this view, Bloom’s Western canon is very much like the Star Wars and MCU canons, in that they all attempt, however imperfectly, to describe the essential texts for understanding, navigating, and even producing Western literature/Star Wars stuff/MCU stuff. Thus, the canon becomes not merely a metatext that records the narrative/history of a culture, but one that actively helps reproduce that culture. The reason they become controversial, then, is because they exclude things that some people think actually are important parts of those narratives.

          If we accept this, then as the history or narrative become more deeper and broader, we will of necessity experience a real dialectical tension between a single canon that inevitably excludes texts in ways that can be culturally harmful, or balkanizing the canon in ways that can lead to harmful cultural balkanization.

          None of this is to say one way or the other whether, ultimately, canons are worth all the fuss (I actually think they are, but with the understanding that they are, in fact, dialectical, and should not be calcified in their current state).Report