My buddy (and frequent inspiration for these essays), Dustin Simmons, told me about a new book that he's reading. It's called Great Books and it has an interesting premise: A mid-career film critic returns to his freshman humanities courses to reread with a new generation the bulwarks of the Western canon. I've looked over the introduction, and it looks like a great read. (It was published in 1997, so I wonder if some of the triteness that he looks at with a nostalgic "Ahh, so naive" expression doesn't permeate a lot of what comes after--the internet was nascent at the time, and the explosion of voices that the internet has allowed hadn't become the cacophony that it is now.)
What I wanted to focus on, however, was this moment, taken from page 12:
I remember a moment in my Institute of Religion class, which is the college-level courses for studying the LDS church. The Institute teacher was saying something about how God wants us to mow our lawns (not making this up), and I pointed out the fact that our concept of lawns is a cultural construct and isn't necessarily the only way to keep our belongings in order. The teacher stared at me, then reiterated his point: We're supposed to mow our lawns.
This was my first clash of ideas in college in which I advocated a more open reading of the world than that in which I had grown up. It's hard to parse out my feelings about this shift. It seems tempting to think that college broke me out of my conservative, inherited purview, but what ended up happening was, I met people on my mission. A lot of people, some of whom I cared about very much. And the idea that their cultures, language, and traditions were somehow inferior because they weren't my culture, language, or traditions became repugnant.
This was solidified when my grandmother reported of her trip to Japan, when she was at a Buddhist (or maybe Shinto) shrine. While there, she stood in awe of the great architecture, thoughtful attention to detail, and dedication to preservation of their cultural and religious iconography. Then, she told me in her Spirit voice* that, "The Spirit whispered to me, 'These are an abomination to the Lord', and I had to remember that."
I likely nodded along to humor my grandmother, but that has stuck in my craw for a long time. In some ways, moments like the ones I've detailed above have given me an allergy to "conservative" type renderings for a lot of things.
Yet there's a hypocrisy** when it comes to my defense of the Western canon. In part because of the school where I work, where classical education and liberal arts are at the heart of the vision, and in part because of my undying and highly inappropriate mancrush on Milton and Shakespeare, I have a strong impulse to promulgate the pieces of the classics I most deeply identify with. So, despite the fact that I'm a very content deconstructivist and postmodernist and I love using sundry literary lenses to read and reread works--and I feel very strongly about increasing the diversity of voices that are studied and regarded as masterpieces--I'm in the position of constantly pushing the straight and narrow path of Bardolatry and its Greco-Roman roots.
I don't know if this inconsistency undoes any of my validity as a teacher. I feel as though I recognize the errors and mistakes in the canon and, as I mentioned before, advocate greater inclusion of diverse voices, while at the same time maintaining the preeminence of the humanities. Nevertheless, there's a tension in this that comes from left-leaning impulses on interpretation and reader response, and right-leaning desires to preserve the best that the culture has created.
There could be a middle ground somewhere, but the issue always comes down to the fact that one teaches (or reads or watches or plays or...or...) what one does at the expense of everything else. Because I teach Shakespeare, I don't have time to teach Cisneros. Because I read Jane Austen, I don't read Zadie Smith. I entrench myself in the classics that I love, and remain in the cultural milieu in which I grew up. But I genuinely think that other voices are important and ought to be heard.
But, what, not by me? That's villainous.
Whatever the correct course is, I'm sure I'll stumble along until I find it--or don't, I suppose, there are no guarantees. As my life has been read from right to left, I wonder if it will start to move the other direction--a pendulum of reading whose very mobility makes it both strong and weak, sure and unsure. That's the problem of a pendulum: It's impossible to pin down, and if I'm looking for something that's True, I would want it to be stable.
And a pendulum that's stuck in the middle isn't actually doing what a pendulum is supposed to do.
----
* The "Spirit voice" is a vocal tic (?) of many Mormons. When they speak of sacred things (or stand up at the pulpit for almost any reason), they often will use a breathy, hushed tone. I find it maddening often enough, though it's well-intentioned and so I try not to let it irritate me too much.
** That word may be too strong: At the very least, it's an incongruity. But maybe it's just human.
What I wanted to focus on, however, was this moment, taken from page 12:
Such complaints [about Eurocentric canon], which issued generally from the academic left, especially from a variety of feminist, Marxist, and African-American scholars, were answered in turn by conservatives with resoundingly grandiose notions of the importance of the Western tradition for American national morale.Having come from (I suppose) the academic left, this made me pause. I am a native Utahn (so much so that I spell it Utahn instead of Utahan which is the correct spelling and there's a lot to unpack with that statement, but I'm moving on), so it should come as no surprise that much of my education was with a fairly hefty conservative bent. When I finally hit university (I say with airs; it was still a state college at the time), it was a pretty shocking shift to have more liberally minded professors with whom I began to interact.
I remember a moment in my Institute of Religion class, which is the college-level courses for studying the LDS church. The Institute teacher was saying something about how God wants us to mow our lawns (not making this up), and I pointed out the fact that our concept of lawns is a cultural construct and isn't necessarily the only way to keep our belongings in order. The teacher stared at me, then reiterated his point: We're supposed to mow our lawns.
This was my first clash of ideas in college in which I advocated a more open reading of the world than that in which I had grown up. It's hard to parse out my feelings about this shift. It seems tempting to think that college broke me out of my conservative, inherited purview, but what ended up happening was, I met people on my mission. A lot of people, some of whom I cared about very much. And the idea that their cultures, language, and traditions were somehow inferior because they weren't my culture, language, or traditions became repugnant.
This was solidified when my grandmother reported of her trip to Japan, when she was at a Buddhist (or maybe Shinto) shrine. While there, she stood in awe of the great architecture, thoughtful attention to detail, and dedication to preservation of their cultural and religious iconography. Then, she told me in her Spirit voice* that, "The Spirit whispered to me, 'These are an abomination to the Lord', and I had to remember that."
I likely nodded along to humor my grandmother, but that has stuck in my craw for a long time. In some ways, moments like the ones I've detailed above have given me an allergy to "conservative" type renderings for a lot of things.
Yet there's a hypocrisy** when it comes to my defense of the Western canon. In part because of the school where I work, where classical education and liberal arts are at the heart of the vision, and in part because of my undying and highly inappropriate mancrush on Milton and Shakespeare, I have a strong impulse to promulgate the pieces of the classics I most deeply identify with. So, despite the fact that I'm a very content deconstructivist and postmodernist and I love using sundry literary lenses to read and reread works--and I feel very strongly about increasing the diversity of voices that are studied and regarded as masterpieces--I'm in the position of constantly pushing the straight and narrow path of Bardolatry and its Greco-Roman roots.
I don't know if this inconsistency undoes any of my validity as a teacher. I feel as though I recognize the errors and mistakes in the canon and, as I mentioned before, advocate greater inclusion of diverse voices, while at the same time maintaining the preeminence of the humanities. Nevertheless, there's a tension in this that comes from left-leaning impulses on interpretation and reader response, and right-leaning desires to preserve the best that the culture has created.
There could be a middle ground somewhere, but the issue always comes down to the fact that one teaches (or reads or watches or plays or...or...) what one does at the expense of everything else. Because I teach Shakespeare, I don't have time to teach Cisneros. Because I read Jane Austen, I don't read Zadie Smith. I entrench myself in the classics that I love, and remain in the cultural milieu in which I grew up. But I genuinely think that other voices are important and ought to be heard.
But, what, not by me? That's villainous.
Whatever the correct course is, I'm sure I'll stumble along until I find it--or don't, I suppose, there are no guarantees. As my life has been read from right to left, I wonder if it will start to move the other direction--a pendulum of reading whose very mobility makes it both strong and weak, sure and unsure. That's the problem of a pendulum: It's impossible to pin down, and if I'm looking for something that's True, I would want it to be stable.
And a pendulum that's stuck in the middle isn't actually doing what a pendulum is supposed to do.
----
* The "Spirit voice" is a vocal tic (?) of many Mormons. When they speak of sacred things (or stand up at the pulpit for almost any reason), they often will use a breathy, hushed tone. I find it maddening often enough, though it's well-intentioned and so I try not to let it irritate me too much.
** That word may be too strong: At the very least, it's an incongruity. But maybe it's just human.
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