Personally, I prefer detailed replies. It's exactly what I need to open up my thinking.
I do wonder if a canon is such a horrible thing. In a sense, things get canonized anyways. Right now, Amazon is building a canon. The New York Times bestseller list is building a canon. Google is building a canon. The canons are based on consumption patterns, which are easily skewed by PR techniques. Also, scholars pick and choose what we teach, and, unfortunately, this is often just based on who is the "hot" theorist or which subjects are prioritized in current criticism. And, while this idea of a poorly formed canon is appealing to me. I also think it allows other priorities, unnamed priorities, to drive the formation of taste. So, you have canons that are formed by who can generate better press, how much space there is in the marketplace, which cultural leaders have embraced it, and whether or not you can make money off it. But more importantly, having a canon, knowing what we know about language and the value of such things, just makes critics more accountable. Then you can actually hold someone responsible, if they write a book and it comes out of U of Chicago Press, and as a consequence, everybody starts focusing on their idea, and neglecting something else important, you can point to this as a weakness in our system of knowledge. If you are going to make a statement as a critic, then you have to first admit that you are engaging in power, and the idea of a canon provides a nice tidy node to hang these discursive threads so that other people can worship them or curse them. It means that people can and should take more care when they select texts. I have been fairly happy with the Norton Anthology, which creates a canon, but then I can also give my students things that are NOT in the book. (The ELO Collections also serve this function). This usually generates a pretty fantastic discussion about the canon. The same with electronic literature, we start with a definition of literature, but after they look at a few pieces, they start getting uncomfortable with the definition of literature they created on the first day of class. Then, eventually, as they look for their own works, they get unhappy with my syllabus. In this way, definitions, especially those which are held in earnest, can be a really good tool. They might not be what the artist needs, but they certainly seem helpful for more general readers. And, as a critic, I find them useful--in the same way that Derrida uses definitions. You jump off of them, head out into strange territory, and then circle back. (I'm just not as smart.... imagine if Derrida spent a significant portion of his life huffing gas and watching demolition derbies... that's about where I am at intellectually.) Peace! Davin _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
