Friday, February 21, 1997
EDUCATION:
Literature’s worth derived from centuries of male Western
cultural hegemonyBy Vy Nguyen
As an English major, I have to take issue with the viewpoint
which was printed on Feb. 11 and authoritatively titled "Core
classes needed to master literature." The piece vigorously defended
the English department’s focus on traditional Eurocentric, male
literature on the assertion that, like it or not, this is what
English literature, truthfully and objectively, is all about, and
everyone who thinks differently is a revisionist (the horror).
In simply glancing at the title, so evocative of all that is
static and barren in the field of literature, students of all
majors probably emitted a collective groan of disgust, weary of
once again being told to learn by rote the wisdom of the proverbial
"dead white man."
Now don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against dead white men.
Unlike most students, I relished the English 10 series, wallowed in
Old English and swooned over the perfection of a Shakespearean
phrase. If given the choice, I would happily study all the pillars
of the established literary canon  Milton, Chaucer,
Shakespeare  on my own free will. In and of themselves, they
are beautiful works.
When we start to talk about "foundational texts," however, and
what constitutes a "cornerstone of modern society," the debate
becomes decidedly more complicated. It is naive to uphold the
absolute historical significance or artistic merit of a text
without once questioning how that status came into being.
If we hypothetically trace this process, it becomes increasingly
clear how very subjective are our notions of what is important and
to whom it is important. Let’s say a piece of literature gets
written (this could be set in the present or in the foggy streets
of 16th-century England). It then needs to get published. If lucky,
the author has wealthy and influential patrons who find an
established publishing house that gets the book distributed in all
the major book stores and adequately publicized. If enough
important people read and like the book over time, it eventually
worms its way onto a university reading list and gets set down as
something that a lot of smart people think is important to
study.
The university gains in prestige, and soon other universities
adopt a similar curriculum. Scholars spend endless hours debating
over the footnote on Page 348. No one really remembers how or why,
but several decades later that book has become the be-all and
end-all of modern thought. Clearly, every step along the way is
completely affected by current social values, economic and class
considerations, and the influence of presiding institutions of
power. In simplified terms, all our ideas of what is right and
wrong, good and bad, important and peripheral, are socially
constructed.
This is an unavoidable fact of human perception and thought, and
is certainly not immoral or evil in and of itself. Only when one
dominant set of social constructions gains the appearance of
objective reality and in so doing actively suppresses the voices of
other traditions does the situation become problematic.
The writer of last week’s viewpoint says that "English, just as
other subjects, has a concrete foundation, a solid history …
which must not be ignored because of personal bias." Such an
inflated statement is laughable; when it comes down to it, what is
anything and everything in this society built on if not the
"personal bias" of those in power?
The important questions then become "Who’s biased?" and "Who
benefits?" Well, for centuries, it has been the biases of the
wealthy, white and male that have held full sway and determined
students’ perception of the Sacred Canon.
When we look at our values as largely social constructions, the
absolute nature of what is accepted as true or right instantly
becomes destabilized and deconstructed. The Western male tradition
is obviously not inherently better than all others, but our
education, though intended to be an intellectually broadening
experience, often misleads us into thinking so.
Students are not taught that it was largely lesbian writers, and
not men like James Joyce, who were the "founding fathers" of modern
literature. We are rarely encouraged to examine Western literature
and history or even science and technology from the perspective of
the marginalized, colonized or environmentally ravaged. Our general
education or major requirements did not require us to learn how
society and academia cloak their social biases within institutional
respectability and intellectual snobbery.
I take the required classes in Shakespeare and Chaucer, but I
also try to work in as much Third World, queer and women’s
literature as possible. Although I disagree with the previous
viewpoint’s blithe assertion that there is "more than enough
emphasis on ethnic and women’s literature" in our curriculum, a
number of these courses do exist. Sometimes, such material even
makes it into "mainstream" classes, like American Literature.
But what message is sent when the university considers one
tradition important enough to make it a universal requirement and,
at the same time, marginalizes all other traditions as something
especially interested students can make time for if they really
want? This essentially relegates these courses to limited
enrollments and low funding, and they are the first courses cut
when budget cuts come around.
What we need is to make some changes in the UCLA curriculum to
actively deconstruct in the minds of students and academia what
amounts to centuries’ worth of ingrained Eurocentric education. As
a start, we should at least include in our general education a
universitywide diversity requirement, something that every other UC
school has long since implemented and found beneficial.
Unfortunately, UCLA, which will undergo a drastic drop in the
diversity of its student body because of affirmative action’s
demise, continues to uphold a lack of diversity in its curriculum.
What describes the university position is not so much a resistance
to expanding the curriculum to make room for a benign
"multiculturalism," but rather a resistance to fundamentally
changing the curriculum and shifting its Eurocentric
foundations.
By their very nature, ethnic, lesbian, bisexual, gay and women’s
studies challenge the status quo and its structure of dominance. As
with other aspects of society, the educational elite will strive to
maintain the intellectual colonization of marginalized communities
and limit curricular diversity.
Viewpoints like last week’s make less and less sense at a
university like UCLA, where the student body and the surrounding
community are remarkably diverse. This cultural richness should
propel the university to the forefront of multicultural and
international studies, but closed minds and established powers
refuse to change for the better.
If we as students resent being required to learn about a
tradition that is not our own, or if we bemoan the scarcity of LBG,
ethnic and women’s studies courses, we have to take it upon
ourselves to demand a more relevant and honest college education.
Certainly those comfortably ensconced in the Academic Senate and
traditional departments won’t take that initiative. Nevertheless,
this is the kind of constructive reform that keeps a public
institution like UCLA intellectually vital and socially
responsible.