*grins* LJ really, really wants me to read this comment - it emailed it to me about eight times. :)
Okay! I feel the need to begin by apologising for making you feel hurt, 'cause, dude, debate is one thing, but making you feel hurt, definitely not on. My saying I don't persnally like English lit much is, honestly, the same as other people saying they think philosophy is ivory-tower nonsense or the first thing we do is, we kill all the lawyers, or, Iona, you find truth and beauty in the Law of Property Act, you are a crazy person. Honestly, my not liking something does not at all indicate that it's not worth studying!
They're English literature too, dammit
Are they? Are they really? (Note: not sarcasm!) Because if so, then I fully take the baby-and-bathwater comment. There are many books that I love, that didn't come within being mentioned at all when I was being taught English formally - and at one point, I loved being taught English formally - and you can get very irritated at the whiteness of what you're taught, and come to think, then what you like is by definition not literature. (For example: Midnight's Children, I like very much. I would never call it literature, because it has Hindi and Urdu in it. I'm not saying you're wrong to call it literature! I'm saying, such is the power of what colonialism does to people.)
Re: other literature, I really did mean English as in "from England" - I'm a nut for American lit, particularly the Beats.
I wonder if you're primarily objecting to the canon and the way it's been forced on you during the formal study of English literature, rather than the study of English literature(s) itself?
Yes, that's probably fair. And, in addition to that, I was being flip. As I said above, I wouldn't have said that if I'd thought it would be hurtful.
OTOH, want me to bring you back some shiny postcolonial writing for your birthday? It's almost impossible to get hold of most Indigenous Australian writers in Oxford, and I'd love to see what you think... :D
omg PLEASE PLEASE. I was in Sydney three years ago and hardly saw any of it because I was too busy drooling in bookshops. That time, I read more about indigenous Australian history; I would love to read the literature!
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2008-12-15 05:43 pm (UTC)Okay! I feel the need to begin by apologising for making you feel hurt, 'cause, dude, debate is one thing, but making you feel hurt, definitely not on. My saying I don't persnally like English lit much is, honestly, the same as other people saying they think philosophy is ivory-tower nonsense or the first thing we do is, we kill all the lawyers, or, Iona, you find truth and beauty in the Law of Property Act, you are a crazy person. Honestly, my not liking something does not at all indicate that it's not worth studying!
They're English literature too, dammit
Are they? Are they really? (Note: not sarcasm!) Because if so, then I fully take the baby-and-bathwater comment. There are many books that I love, that didn't come within being mentioned at all when I was being taught English formally - and at one point, I loved being taught English formally - and you can get very irritated at the whiteness of what you're taught, and come to think, then what you like is by definition not literature. (For example: Midnight's Children, I like very much. I would never call it literature, because it has Hindi and Urdu in it. I'm not saying you're wrong to call it literature! I'm saying, such is the power of what colonialism does to people.)
Re: other literature, I really did mean English as in "from England" - I'm a nut for American lit, particularly the Beats.
I wonder if you're primarily objecting to the canon and the way it's been forced on you during the formal study of English literature, rather than the study of English literature(s) itself?
Yes, that's probably fair. And, in addition to that, I was being flip. As I said above, I wouldn't have said that if I'd thought it would be hurtful.
OTOH, want me to bring you back some shiny postcolonial writing for your birthday? It's almost impossible to get hold of most Indigenous Australian writers in Oxford, and I'd love to see what you think... :D
omg PLEASE PLEASE. I was in Sydney three years ago and hardly saw any of it because I was too busy drooling in bookshops. That time, I read more about indigenous Australian history; I would love to read the literature!