Uprooting the Culture

"For what we are asking be scrutinized are nothing less than shared cultural assumptions so deeply rooted and so long ingrained that, for the most part, our critical colleagues have ceased to recognize them as such. In other words, what is really being bewailed in the claims that we distort texts or threaten the disappearance of the great Western literary tradition itself is not so much the disappearance of the either text or tradition but, instead, the eclipse of that particular form of the text, and that particular shape of the canon, which previously reified male readers' sense of power and significance in the world."

~Annette Kolodny, "Dancing through the Minefield"

I am fascinated by the Feminist theorists we have been reading in class, not only because I don't recall reading much by Feminist theorists before (even though I have read works by women writers), but also because I am amazed at what they are actually saying. Brought up in a conservative home and church, the term "Feminism" brought with it some of the most negative connotations and outpourings of anger at how the Feminists are "bringing our country down." And because I did not read anything (perhaps may not have been "allowed" to because that would be siding with the enemy) by Feminist writers, I did think they were "evil."

And I am beginning to see that I was so wrong.

I won't even begin to go in to all the good that Feminism has done for women in our country and in our world, and I will admit that nothing is perfect and that evils and injustices can be done by any group or person in society (including some Feminist agendas in those categories). But I will go straight to the quote I have above from Kolodny dealing with cultural assumptions so deeply rooted in society, cultural assumptions about male superiority, and subsequently, female subordination, and also the assumptions that female writers are less valid than male writers. And I want to focus just for a little on these deep-seated, shared cultural assumptions that infuse all of what we do. Again, I never really thought about these assumptions until reading the Feminist theorists, but once I read them, I realized how true this is. As I spoke of in my last post, change in anything is often resisted, especially if it causes shifts of power in people who never want to lose that power and sway in the public domain (or private, for that matter). And in all these Feminist writings, I see them heralding change, a change that involves unraveling the deep-seated assumptions that males are better then females (sorry to give the most trite summarization possible). Obviously, I think this view is changing now, but I really believe these views are so deeply rooted... women's studies are just beginning to flourish, and also be seen as valid. And we still have a long way to go. But I also think we have to be careful not to go too far in the opposite direction... to do to women what we have done to men in the literary canon for so long. And as Kolodny says, in opening up the canon to females, we are not saying there is nothing valuable in the long-rooted male canon of our history, but instead opening that canon up to new writers, new interpretations, and in effect, a new inclusive canon that speaks to both genders.

Even though I think these deep-seated assumptions and views about male and female writers will persist for a long while (they are, after all, deeply rooted in our minds, so much so that it took me reading a Feminist perspective to discover them for the first time in my 21 years of existence), but I think we are on the road to at least unearthing and challenging those assumptions. After all, we just have to read the sources and see them for what they truly are...