Confronting the Canon Contrapuntally: The Example of Edward Said

Abstract

How should English departments in the postcolonial world confront canonical English texts in the current time? The response seems to lie with Said. This chapter proffers a detailed analysis of Edward Said’s ideas on the literary canon and on revisioning the curriculum of literary studies in our part of the world. Said’s complex stand on the cannon, this chapter argues, can help us reformulate the English studies. Said’s position can also make us aware of the necessity of giving more space to resistance literature in our curriculums. This chapter emphasizes on taking positions that are oppositional, to “speak truth to power”, to always read all texts with a sense of our location in space and time, and to be wary of residual discursive formations of the colonial past and the pitfalls of the nationalist consciousness.

An older version of this chapter was published in Literature, History and Culture: Writings in Honor of Professor Aali Areefur Rahman Edited by Abdullah Al Mamun & Maswood Akhter, Department of English, Rajshahi University, Bangladesh in 2014.