Thread by @RomGothSam

Johannes often says the things the voice in the back of my head is crying.

When people talk about books being 'cancelled', they are often eliding the fact that by their standards (apparently inclusion on university courses or continuous publication) most books are 'cancelled' 1/

https://twitter.com/JohannesTEvans/status/1376281524195233804

Most books aren't taught. Most books aren't in continuous publication. Most books aren't on high school curricula. That's...millions of books.

So to suggest that not being published/on curricula/taught at university means a book is 'cancelled' is nonsensical 2/

The material that we choose to teach is a selection of what we consider important. And the question is who gets to decide what's important and how we define it.

The problem with the 'canon' is precisely that is a selection of texts which have been considered important 3/

They have been considered important by certain people and with certain criteria in mind. The criteria can vary - from impact, to notoriety, to complexity, to engagement with specific socio-political or historical issues, to demonstrating a literary movement... 3/

The idea of a thread like this is not to say that those criteria are entirely invalid or not rooted in some sort of reality. Rather it is to suggest that those criteria necessarily distort our conception of literary history by producing a particular narrative or understanding 4/

and historically that particular narrative and understanding has been one which centres and celebrates particular voices. It has been one which either passively or very actively with prejudice represses other voices. 5/

I'm a lecturer in literature and I don't want to abandon all notions of tracing historical trends, mapping texts which reflect or influenced the literary field of the period, highlight specific political and social changes. But the problem is... that's not what the canon does. 6/

Canons are created after the period in which the texts are written. They are a retrospective tool of organisation which seeks to produce a specific narrative of the era, its development and its key texts. It is produced in a specific context which influences these choices 7/

If we never seek to move beyond the 'canon', we reify the decisions of a specific person/group of people/system about what's important. And those decisions often don't even map well onto the reality of the time. 8/

A couple of examples from my own field. Have you heard of Ann Radcliffe? Have you heard of Regina Marie Roche? Radcliffe is canonised as a key Gothic writer, studied wherever the Gothic is studied and Roche is...not. But why? 9/

Roche sold as well as Radcliffe in her time. Her books had a greater longevity than some of Radcliffes. They were similarly celebrated... So why haven't you heard of her? In part because Walter Scott picked out Radcliffe as different from her piers. 10/

He used his (often faint) praise of Radcliffe to produce an exception to the rule of 'generic' and somewhat contemptible female Gothic outpouring. And as Scott is canonised we are handed down his writings and his readings. They form our canon creation. 11/

Did you know that some of the most popularly consumed literature of the late 18th century was written by Black writers? Olaudah Equiano's work went through 9 editions in his lifetime. It influenced the change in laws regarding the trade in trafficked Africans. 12/

If you studied a course in late 18th century literature and didn't read it, it suggests something about what was considered worthy of inclusion, important, influential by creators of that course. And Equiano is one of the most well-known. We should be reading beyond him 13/

Did you know ballad sheets, chapbooks, penny dreadfuls sold by the bucket load? That one of the first best-sellers was a novel about the devil by Marie Correlli (19th C)? That Sophia Lee was writing historical fiction decades before Walter Scott and Thomas Leland before her. 14/

The canon represents what people have chosen to include in a particular time and place as the most important and valuable. It's often not the most popular. Or the most discussed. Or the most reflective of reading trends. Or of contemporary politics. Canon is construction 15/

Ian Watt's Rise of the Novel, which dominated understanding of the 18th century novel's development at various levels for ages and is still taught, bases the history of the novel around male writers - Richardson, Defoe, Fielding... 16/

When women writers were key writers in massively popular genres during the period (amatory fiction, the Gothic) and shaped the rise of the novel as both producers and consumers. And yet Watt's work for some still produces the canon through which they interrogate the 18th C. 17/

Canon is construction. It is also constantly changing. There isn't one canon. There are canons of specific eras and genres. There are counter-canons. There are deconstructions of canon. What we teach should continue to change. To reflect what we learn. 18/

What we teach doesn't need to reflect what was constructed historically with significant bias and also limitations. Fields grow and evolve. There's more books than we can possibly teach. 19/

Cancelling books doesn't exist. Exploring the world, history, literature, even 'canon' through different lenses does.

If someone hasn't read what you consider a classic, I recommend checking what they think of as classic. What you can learn. What different lens you can use. 20/

What marginalised perspectives you can encounter, listen to, celebrate.

I enjoy the 'classics' - boring 18th and 19th century tomes with lots of white British people being polite to each other viciously. I'm not knocking them. But they're not even a drop in the ocean. 21

Anyway, in summary. Canon is construction. You don't cancel a book by removing it from a course. You just provide the space for another book, with a whole world to teach you, to get its time in the sun instead. Celebrate marginalised voices. Resist oppressive canons.

22/22

Oh and go read the original tweet and tip Johannes!

https://twitter.com/JohannesTEvans/status/1376281524195233804?s=20

Oh and btw, yes, this is a well-worn discourse. I'm not saying anything new here that other people haven't said. Just an example from my field. And because the idea of 'cancelling books' seems to be trundling by on its rounds again