From: msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 13:33:47 GMT


                               Wednesday, the 26th of August, 1992

Some responses to Michael Rooney's responses to Clayton (I should know
better than to get involved in this, but I'm away for two weeks in a
couple of days, so I can duck the consequences shamelessly). Michael
writes: 
  	When was the last time you saw Herodotos in the flesh, eh,
  Clayton?  Did he seem "indisputably white"?  There's little ethno-      
  archaeological evidence as to the "color" of the ancient Hellenes.
  They were probably about as "white" as similar east Mediterranean
  peoples, i.e., definitely non-Germano-Scandinavian.  Or were they
  mixed?  Perhaps "colored"?  Those from Asia Minor, "Asian"?  How
  indisputable, whiteness? 
  
  	Take your Afrikaaner logic elsewhere, Clayton.

Your own is what I'm concerned about, Michael. The whole idea of
making these classifications in the first place irks me no end, but
I think Clayton was quite right. In terms of any *functional* definition
in North American society right now (i.e. whether you count as a visible
minority for purposes of affirmative action goals), modern Greeks are white.
Clayton didn't say ancient Greeks were Germano-Scandinavian. He only
pointed out that it was a little bizarre for Michelle to complain
about the absence of minorities and women in the Great Books set, and
then use the apparently quite arbitrary notion of race that she did
to turn around and assert that the classical Greeks were non-white.
I mean, besides the Greeks, there're Dante and Machiavelli in the set,
and Cervantes, and the Roman authors, all as Mediterranean as the Greeks.
In fact, you'd end up with the assertion that a large fraction of
canonical authors is non-white.
  
Clayton said what I think is a perfectly reasonable thing: 
  Maybe I'm just a narrow-minded sort, but unless a writer makes a point
  of telling me his race or gender, and that it has some significance to 
  what he is writing about (e.g., Shelby Steele's _The Content of our 
  Character_), I don't see much point to classifying the author by race 
  or gender.
  
Michael responded:
  	So the fact that women and minorities make up a marginal,     
  highly disproportionate fraction of the U.S. Congress is irrelevant?

I thought Clayton was talking about books.

Besides, irrelevant to what? To sociological studs? To
social-engineering notions of what would constitute
societal perfection?

  You miss the intention of the original posters.  They were attempting
  to detect the disproportionately small numbers of minorities in the
  traditional canon of so-called great literature.  Do you get the point?

I get it. In fact, I think I tried to make the point that this
is in fact true.

  Or have non-whites simply not produced any "great works" worthy of the
  canon?

I think they haven't (warning: be damn sure of yourself before getting
self-righteous about this one---I have already laid down a lot of
qualification for what this statement *should* mean) That
was also my point.

Why do you want it both ways? That is, why are you both defending that
the canon is inclusive (that the Greeks were non-white) and then
claiming that the canon is a conspiracy of whites to exclude non-whites?
Since, if anything is worthy of canonization, the classical Greeks are,
it would seem this conspiracy has been quite the miserable failure, hasn't
it?

As far as the Great Books set goes (which is, after all,
what Michelle posted about) I think that there's a
better case for St. Augustine of Hippo being counted non-white
than anybody else in the set.

  Cordially,

Equally as cordially,
                Mike Morris
          (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)


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