Tomorrow I will be beginning my Problem/Solution part of the semester. That title is, of course, a useless one as I attempted to sequence all my classroom activities, but it is important to share. It is important, because I needed something filler for tomorrow. They turn in their papers and start the next unit, but what was I going to do to fill the time? I decided to address the "literature problem."

The problem with current literary studies is addressed by Elizabeth Kantor in her essay "Unlearning Literature." She offers a critique of college professors and their teaching techniques. That critique doesn't bother me, as such, I have lot's of problems with the way students are taught today, but the thrust of her critique...well, she's wrong. She is wrong in the way Ann Coulter is wrong. She is wrong in the way all people who are so embedded in the system that they cannot see it's problems are wrong. Yes that was very Marxist of me, but don't worry, there will be more.

Kantor says, "Universities are full of trendy English professors who don't read Shakespeare for the beauty of the poetry or its peerless insights into human nature. The point is to uncover the oppression that's supposed to define Western culture: the racism, "patriarchy," and imperialism that must lurk beneath the surface of everything written by those "dead white males." (The latest book from University of Pennsylvania professor emerita Phyllis Rackin, for example, investigates how "Macbeth" contributed to the "domestication of women.") With their low opinion of Western civilization, it's no wonder that so many English professors teach material that isn't English literature at all: Marx and Derrida -- and even comic books, politically correct bestsellers from the '80s, foreign films, and pornography -- rather than Shakespeare and Jane Austen."

Oh where to start? I'll give you one more choice tidbit first: "Western culture isn't in our genes. It's learned. And despite what the typical 21st-century college professor may believe, Western civilization has conferred enormous benefits on the human race: extraordinary freedom and respect for women, workable self-government, freedom of speech and the press."

I think I want to share my favorite thing about this first. Her belief that Western civilization is comprised of only Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Beowulf, and the rest of the literary cannon. My second favorite thing, is that she equates only these texts with the development of great ideas, i.e. "freedom and respect for women, workable self-government, freedom of speech and the press." My last, and most favoritest thing of all (yes I said favoritest) is her complete, literary blindness to the themes of "patriarchy" and "imperialism" in those dead white males.

I'm not going to go through for you and list the instances that Plato remarks on women as less strong then men, too emotional, or weak. I'm not going to quote from Milton when he refers to Eve as the subject of Adam, serving not God directly but God through Adam. I'm not going to show you passages from Shakespeare where women are broken, like a horse, and then held up as the personification of the perfect wife. I'm not going to do any of that, because it is all obviously there. In the same way that Shakespeare also offers amazing soliloquy's questioning racism and the nature of thought or Milton challenges established authority and makes his reader second guess what they know. I'm not going to point out that the culture we have today, the beliefs, thoughts, educational system, and government is made up of Marx and Derrida as equally as what came before. I'm not going to point any of that out because it's common knowledge. It's there if you look.

Literature is neither perfect nor perfectly flawed. We have reached this point in our civilization by learning from our mistakes and making the same ones over, and over again. Christians were persecuted by the Romans. Christians persecuted the Jews. Catholics persecuted the Protestants. The Protestants persecuted everybody. The white settlers committed genocide against all peoples they colonized. The African tribes committed genocide against each other. Men have subjugated women in a patriarchal society. Women have pigeon-holed men as both perfect and useless, sometimes simultaneously. To deny that literature of the past does not promote the ideas of the time that bore it, patriarchy, racism, is more than simply naive--it's stupid. To deny that canonized literature of our past hasn't shaped our culture for the better and the worse is equally idiotic.

But more importantly than any of that is the underlying belief Kantor spouts that modern literature isn't good enough. That what we create today, in modern times isn't "Western" enough, or deep enough, or insightful enough. How better are we to see our culture today, than by what it produces? Canonized literature can show us the flaws of the past, but modern culture can show us those we are repeating as I write this. If we don't look at what we are, if we don't discuss, if we don't teach our children to recognize it, then what are we doing? Thinking of the '50's when everything was perfect? Except for McCarthyism of course. McCarthyism which looks suspiciously like how we are "safe-guarding" ourselves from terrorism now.

We have women that hate women. Not for any better reason than because "girls are whiners" and "criers" and every other female stereotype promoted in media, including old literature still discussed, today. Women that have no idea how deeply misogynistic they are. There are Hispanics that hate Hispanics. Blacks that hate Blacks. And some that hate everyone. People absorb the negative messages of society, not from thin air, but from what is around them. That includes the literature they read and are forced to read, the television, and movies. It also includes societal values that have been absorbed from literature and media of the past. Until a discussion is began about why people hate what they do, or feel as they do then all our great ideals--freedom, truth, equality--are nothing but fantastic rhetoric. Until we acknowledge that those things haven't been arrived at, we aren't there, and furthermore, that we never were there, we will never get there. We will certainly never get closer.

So no. I don't think Shakespeare and Jane Austen should disappear from the curriculum. Nor do I think they should only be discussed in negative ways. But I do think Elizabeth Kantor is an idiot, and a harmful one at that.