THE GL•BAL CAN•N

Joel Whitney is founding editor of Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics, and a member of the board of the Overseas Press Club of America. His writing and commentary have appeared in The New Republic, The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Paris Review, The Nation, Agni, New York and on NPR. In 2003, he was awarded a “Discovery” prize by the 92nd Street Y and The Nation for his poetry.

A Mongrel Canon Joel Whitney

In 1994, the critic Harold Bloom mounted ran. But all too rarely does Tehran get to a vigorous public defense of the western lit- Stratford-upon-Avon. erary canon, which was then under siege. In Indeed, all writers who came after his volume, “The Western Canon,” Bloom Shakespeare have stood in the shadow of lauded the tradition of great western books, his influence. And all, willfully or almost portraying himself as a singular reader in a willfully, misread him—as a result of their one on one reverie with each of twenty-six “anxiety of influence” and as a way to cast canonical authors. No aspect beyond aes- him off and find their entry point into thetics, or influence, should count. Or so he the Canon that Bloom and his school of argued from one side of his mouth. thought would hold. In Shakespeare’s case, But the Bloom-related buzz came you can only work around him. He con- from the very theme he pretended his tains all of us. He invented us, anticipating readers should ignore—the political all the scholarly breakthroughs in philoso- context surrounding the book, a context phy and psychology that would follow. which, sadly, belatedly, persists. For the This argument risks being buried main problem with Bloom’s stance is that, under the multiculturalists’ program—a as many writers with origins outside or veritable “School of Resentment,” popu- partly outside the West can tell us, the lated by Marxists, feminists and other Canon is universal in ways Bloom simul- fellow travelers. The anxious defenders of taneously grasps and discounts. Bloom’s the long-standing Western Canon come to is a one-way universality found when rest on the notion that opening the Canon productions of Shakespeare travel to Teh- dilutes it. There simply isn’t enough time

© 2010 World Policy Institute 19 to read key parts of the Canon—even less global age—how to be at odds with your- after we include works merely for their self as you toggle between cultures. multicultural values. Bloom, that pied In today’s atmosphere of an all but piper of the Western Canon, was clearly moribund publishing industry, immigrant wrong to see fidelity to the tradition of fiction is one of the steady pulses. Espe- great writers as fundamentally incompat- cially in the United States, foreignness ible with multiculturalism. It shows a deep or otherness is both familiar and strange, misunderstanding (by this icon of western almost at once—valued in the arts, scape- culture) of multiculturalism’s corrective goated in populist politics. A foreign or impulses. It shows how much he misdiag- bicultural writer’s strangeness—that is, nosed the true threat. our collective estranged-ness from the world—will continue to drive us toward discovering it in our books, with a nudge Who Rules? from publishers who need something to In 2010, the Berlin Wall is still down. market. This happens for better and worse: Markets rule, though tentatively. The better when a culture or subculture is il- world’s straight-jacketed superpower has luminated brilliantly from within; worse its first black president, with roots in when it leads to tokenism. Kenya and a youth spent in Indonesia. But even given this scale, the principle Suddenly, the great agenda of multicul- that has always held—and that ought to turalism holds sway, despite the strains have heartened rather than agitated those imposed by large-scale immigration in who plump for the Western Canon—re- Europe and the United States, and the mains intact. An author’s greatness comes backdrop of the war on terror, with its from his or her relationship with prior latest “ground-zero mosque” frenzies. greats, western or not. These are the Multiculturalism will overwhelm these individuals who keep our attention in the threats, too, because it has already found long run. The multiculturalist mantle, consensus. The United States, Europe, despite how the paranoid have seen it, has Africa (notably Nigeria), India and other not ignored the past. It has merely spread parts of Asia, notably the Philippines, are the past around. It has found authors all flush with brilliant writers who may whose relationship with a great—if not the write in English but whose parents or great—tradition is healthy, vibrant and grandparents spoke the language only sec- sufficiently anxious. ond, or not at all. Then there are the great Japanese and Chinese writers who come to us in translation. Hopes and Impediments Many of these writers remain rooted Five years before Bloom’s “Western Canon” in their original birthplace, but have a appeared, Chinua Achebe brought out his relationship with the West via language, book of essays “Hopes and Impediments.” work, schooling, exile or immigration. Achebe shows up on Bloom’s appendix Others reside in the West, and tell stories of writers who aspire, promisingly, to the of double-life, double identity—the here Canon. As a Nigerian, Achebe is eligible before here was here. Largely, it’s the back for canonization apparently not by virtue of and forth, literally and figuratively, that being “Western” per se, but by writing well initiates and drives many of these authors. in English. He was also one of the multi- How to be your own doppelganger, cultur- culturalist resenters. “Hopes and Impedi- ally speaking, is the great subject of the ments” opens with “An Image of Africa,”

20 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2010 which is his critique of another canonical ‘beasts who have no houses’ [John Locke in writer in Bloom’s appendix, Joseph Conrad, 1561] writes, ‘They are also people with- who as a Brit, albeit writing much about out heads, having their mouths and eyes the non-western world, fits the stereotype in their breasts.’…[This] represents the of the western creative genius. In the essay, beginning of a tradition…in the West…of Achebe makes the case that Europeans see sub-Saharan Africa as a place of negatives, Africa as a kind of shadow-Europe, a per- of difference, of darkness, of people who, in petually savage “other.” Conrad, a racist at the words of the wonderful poet Rudyard the height of this tendency, Achebe argues, Kipling, are ‘half-devil, half-child.’” was perhaps at his most explicit in “Heart of Darkness.” Take Conrad’s description of a Stories have been used to black mistress of Kurtz, the ivory dispossess and to malign. But trader turned tyrant and demigod deep in the heart of the Congo stories can also be used to Free State: “She was savage and su- perb, wild-eyed and magnificent... empower and to humanize. She stood looking at us without a stir and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable But Achebe’s critique starts with blind purpose.” Achebe disputes, convincingly, spots in the language of “Heart of Dark- the apologia that would separate a patently ness,” namely in Conrad’s mystification racist Marlow, Conrad’s protagonist, from of the landscape, how he makes anything the author himself. All it takes is a quote African “inscrutable” and “incomprehen- from Conrad’s account of his first interac- sible.” If Shakespeare invented the hu- tion with a black man: “A certain enormous man, as Bloom asserts, then Europeans of buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my Conrad’s ilk helped invent and perpetu- conception of blind, furious, unreasoning ate the savage. If Shakespeare contains all rage, as manifested in the human animal to humanity, all philosophy and psychology the end of my days. Of the nigger I used to that come before and after him, all of what dream for years afterwards.” any of us may dream or think or be, then Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Achebe and other multiculturalists are Adichie would seem to agree there’s a right to disdain Conrad for the opposite— problem with the Canon’s singularity. In a for removing any trace of humanity from recent TED (Technology, Entertainment, his African characters. The point should be Design) Talk, two decades after Achebe’s clear. Wanting humans to be depicted with “Image of Africa” first surfaced, Adichie humanity is an aesthetic argument. warned of the dangers of what she calls a “single story” about a place or people, and discusses the early effects of reading And Then There’s Art English stories devoid of Africans. Later, Lest we think such fine aesthetics are con- writers like Achebe inspired a “mental fined to the written word, Achebe observes shift” where she found that people like her that “soon after Conrad had written his “could exist in literature.” She continued, book, an event of far greater consequence “This single story of Africa ultimately was taking place in the art world of Eu- comes I think from western literature… rope.” Gaugin had died in Tahiti. Achebe After referring to the black Africans as quotes Frank Willett, British art historian:

Mongrel Canon 21 Gaugin had gone to Tahiti, the the life that they supply so copiously? most extravagant individual act of No, painting is not made to decorate turning to a non-European culture apartments. It’s an offensive and defen- in the decades immediately before sive weapon against the enemy. and after 1900, when European artists were avid for new artistic As for the mask, it “was made by other experiences. But it was only about savages living just north of Conrad’s River 1904-5 that African art began to Congo,” writes Achebe in one of many ac- make its distinctive impact. One counts of the mask and its history. “They piece is still identifiable—a mask have a name too: the Fang people, and are given to Maurice Vlaminck in without a doubt among the world’s great- 1905. He records that Derain was est masters of the sculptured form.” ‘speechless’ and ‘stunned’ when he Here, it would seem, is a prototypical saw it, bought it from Vlaminck story of a non-western influence streaming and in turn showed it to Picasso into the Western Canon, origins erased. and Matisse, who were also greatly Whether it’s musician Ravi Shankar’s pull affected by it. Ambroise Vollard on Philip Glass; Indian director Satyajit then borrowed it and had it cast Ray’s affect on Martin Scorsese, Wes An- in bronze. The revolution of 20th derson, Merchant Ivory Films, and ET; or century art was under way.” Akira Kurosawa’s films influencing George Lucas and Quentin Tarantino, the question Through several accounts, we gather it is how to account for these international was Matisse who first showed Picasso the impressions, if multicultural arguments mask. Picasso wasted no time mythologiz- aren’t the point? ing it into his personal canon, for Picasso’s One of the key gripes of those who art was storytelling as much as creating cling so frantically to the concept of a objects. He projected onto it a strong im- Western Canon is that forcing students to pulse to ward off evil. Cubism was born on read books strictly for the author’s identity both Cézanne’s brush strokes and Picasso’s effectively blocks them from discover- sense that painting as a decorative art was ing the sublime authors of a more Global retrograde. After the mask, he famously Canon. The extra-western and extra-ca- interrupted an interviewer who pressed nonical influences are already misconstrued him on this and, not to be misunderstood, within a canon of either description. Quite wrote on a piece of paper: simply, we need interpreters from any and all cultures so we can cease projecting what What do you think an artist is? An we do know (ourselves) onto what we don’t imbecile who only has eyes if he’s a (them). Notes Adichie, “Stories matter. painter, ears if he’s a musician, or a lyre Many stories matter. Stories have been used in every chamber of his heart if he’s a to dispossess and to malign. But stories can poet…? Quite the opposite, he is … also be used to empower and to humanize.” a political being constantly alert to the horrifying, passionate or pleasing events in the world, shaping himself How West is Western? completely in their image. How is it A troubling question remains. How west- possible to be uninterested in other ern is the Western Canon? How essential men and by virtue of what cold non- is its western-ness? Strictly speaking, there chalance can you detach yourself from was once a western tradition that was sepa-

22 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2010 rate from literature or other creative arts democratic we are praising it: consequent- of the East. But in a globalized age, how ly the defenders of every kind of regime essential is western-ness to grouping the claim that it is a democracy.” great western authors, artists or musicians This seems to have happened with together? Demographics may do away with “Western.” Many of the apostles of a West- the question faster than we could have ern Canon are forced to extend honorary dreamed. western status to Africans like Achebe who The erstwhile British Empire pro- write in English—though they refuse to duced, among many other ironies, this go as far afield as other non-westerners who most delicious one: In the next decade, In- write in other western languages. This is dia will be the world’s largest English-lan- an obvious conundrum for any American guage book buying market. India already boasts the world’s most populous democ- Blind spots appear that are racy. In terms of audience, India’s film industry—which includes Bollywood, the resolved only by a global Bombay-based film industry (but others too)—is vastly larger than America’s. examination of creativity.

mono- or even bilingual critic. Where to Nefarious Twins draw the line? Bloom, for one, includes Arguments regarding the dangers of Is- ancient Indian texts like The Mahabharata lamism center around the Western Canon’s and The Ramayana in his appendix to “The nefarious twin—some sort of multicultural Western Canon,” but ignores India’s Nobel plot to undermine all moral (and aesthetic) laureate Rabindranath Tagore, a renais- standards entirely. While a Global Canon sance man—poet, novelist, educational may be seen in one camp as the world’s reformer, village organizer—who influ- great hope for a true universality, alongside enced T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Like- founding documents like the Constitution wise, Bloom ignores “1001 Nights,” so and the Universal Declaration of Human that while theologians include Islam, and Rights, it is maligned by its opponents as therefore the Koran, within the spheres of the ultimate source of moral relativism. western religions, Islam’s greatest literary We have purportedly liberal television book, with its feminist liberator, Scheher- personalities (like Bill Maher) and Western ezade, is walled out. In short, when we like Canon-ites alike, referring to cultures they something, when the Fang masks become know almost nothing about, railing about Picasso’s, we say western. But when Gau- how “not all cultures are equal.” gin goes to Tahiti, somehow he fails to I can’t help but think of Orwell’s become eastern. “Politics and the English Language.” However multiculturalism may be “The words democracy, socialism, free- maligned, what it means is omnidirectional dom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each universality. Vain attempts at putting writ- of them several different meanings which ers or other creative personalities in tiny cannot be reconciled with one another,” boxes, or making them the symbols of a vast Orwell observes. “In the case of a word landscape, too often come at the expense like democracy, not only is there no agreed of the far more compelling, and nuanced, definition, but the attempt to make one is mongrel—or hybrid—nature of influence. resisted from all sides. It is almost uni- Proponents of the Western Canon, like versally felt that when we call a country missionaries before them, frequently ignore

Mongrel Canon 23 what we might call the pagan influences, called Western Canon adjusts itself to In- which has the strange effect of reinforcing dia’s rise (and it will happen automatically, our cultural limitations—re-insularizing since markets rule), India’s native languag- us. It’s no coincidence that the literary es are flat-lining. The Anglo-Indian author canon as a concept was born in the 18th Salman Rushdie notes in his introduction century in the same breath as the catch-all to an anthology of Indian writers 50 years concept of the West. after independence, “Mirror Work”: “The “Paradise” derives from the Latin word prose writing—both fiction and non- for a walled-in place. When the Canon is fiction—created in this period by Indian valued for its western-ness, its purity, we writers writing in English is proving to wall out other great traditions. This, de- be a stronger and more important body of spite the fact that Achebe or Gabriel García work than most of what has been produced Márquez or Toni Morrison or Wole Soy- in the 16 ‘official languages’ of India; the inka or Bei Dao have all folded seamlessly so-called ‘vernacular languages,’ during the into their zealous absorption of European same time.” and American classics (whether Cervantes, Such is the enduring power of western Faulkner or whomever) legends from the languages, especially English, itself a mon- ancestors, oral traditions from indigenous grel—even as the West’s direct influence predecessors, creation myths, local and seems to wane. Those of us whose roots vernacular literatures, and folk beliefs. In lie squarely in the West will either need short, blind spots appear that are resolved to find interpreters of the great changes to only by a global examination of creativity. come, or become interpreters ourselves. l There’s one final irony. While the so-

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