DAVID SlDORSKY
713
groups of the society, and accordingly reflecting the values and method–
ologies (the
epistel1le,
in the phrase of Michel Foucault) of the histori–
cally dominant culture. The metaphor of a "canon" magnifies the signifi–
cance of curriculum construction. The adoption of a text written by a
member of an outsider group (perhaps not in point of current fact and
fashion by Jane Austen or Ibn Rushd but by Virginia Woolf or Zora
Neale Hurston) is a blow against the imperial rule of the cultural canon
and, consequently, an act tinged with the aura of resistance and libera–
tion.
It is instructive to recall what a debate on canon formation in its
literal and historical sense, as in the determination of what works are to
be included in the Bible or in the New Testament, is about. The main
assumption of that debate is that there are sacred texts and profane texts.
The sacred texts are the reflection of a divine revelation; that is, they are
either the actual product of such revelation or an authentic witness to it,
and profane works are not. To study the sacred texts is to be initiated
into a valid covenant which provides a way of redemption or salvation
for the individual or group. When an authentic sacred text is denied due
recognition as part of the canon or when a profane text falsely receives
canonic status, then the instruments of human redemption have been
placed in jeopardy.
Admittedly, the concept of the canon is being applied in a
metaphorical way in a secular context. Yet the multiculturalist is using
the metaphor in order
to
argue that removing some texts from the cur–
riculum, those which embody attitudes that are tacitly racist, sexist, or
exploitative, is to delegitimize these expressions of the dominance of
race, gender, and class. To include the works which are the voices of
mi–
norities, women, and other exploited groups is analogous to a revelation
or bearing witness to a true revelation. It is a process of legitimizing the
new egalitarian values, through sacralization of the texts that reflect op–
position to discrimination based on race, class, gender, or sexual orienta–
tion. In the sense of secular faith, then, the establishment of the new
canon is part of the process of redemption for the community.
Along such lines, it follows that to mandate the reading of the
speeches of Martin Luther King on equality or civil disobedience, rather
than Shakespeare's
Tempest,
is to purge the intellectual community of its
historically accepted, that is, "institutional" racism, and begin to replace
it by the new self-consciousness of equality. Similarly, to replace
Aristotle's
Politics,
which has equivocal comments on the equality of
women, with a feminist account by, say, Betty Friedan, of the struggle
for equal rights, is appropriate in light of the requirement that a cultural
canon reflect the values of a liberal and evolving society. George
