The Enduring Hegemony of the English Literary Canon: Symptoms of the Monopoly of Power Relations in Academia

Abstract.Debate over the English literary canon has been revolving around questions of inclusiveness, representation, voice,relations of power,pedagogical practice, and others. My purpose, in this paper is, however, to explore issues around canonsbeyond the established arguments of 'institutional capital', and those of classic post-colonial arguments such as issues aroundrepresentation. In an era that could be described by 'liquid post-modernity', criticisms should be directed to the core of the idea ofcanon itself, or the question one might ask: are canons still valid?While Guillory and other critics have thoroughly dealt withissues around the canon in the Western academy, the present paper investigates the post-colonial higher educational settings, ingeneral, and the Jordanian setting in particular. For an investigation into this context, a qualitative case study was employed togain in-depth insight into how the current English literary canon is perceived and disseminated by the instructors of literature at aJordanian university. The data obtained via semi-structured interviews with these instructors suggested dichotomous andcompeting discourses regarding the canon.Drawing on Foucault’s view of relations of power, Bandura’s ‘human agency’ and‘self theory’ and post-colonialist arguments, Iconclude that the problem of the Jordanian English Literary canon could beunderstood as a variety of ideological thinking or what Icall ‘canonical ideology’, where the proponents (conservativegeneration) and opponents (modern generation) of the current literary canon perceive themselves as having the capacity tounderstand their students and to make choices and impose these choices on them. Whether these instructors are for or against thecanon, it does involve the promotion of a particular ideology; the canon, as a reflection of academic and theoretical fashions ofthe western academy.