How diverse are the ANU English courses currently on offer? Why does this matter?

The English major, claims the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, offers a wide range of courses reflecting the diversity of the discipline of literary studies in English (per ANU Programs and Courses). However, it is no secret that institutionalised literary studies has a history of being complicit in the promotion of particular cultural perspectives and cultural projects associated with dominant discourse. So, how does the ANU English major fit into all of this?

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Hegemony is the power of the ruling class to convince other classes that its interests are the interests of all. This term was coined by Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who investigated how the ruling class succeeds in promoting its own interests in society. Gramsci observed that the ruling class’ domination need not be exerted by force, nor even necessarily by active persuasion. Instead, they exercise a more subtle and conclusive power over the economy, over state apparatuses; education; using the media and the means of cultural production to present the ruling class’s interests as the common interests of the people, it is thus taken for granted. This process of naturalisation means that many principles of cultural inclusion or exclusion remain unexamined.

Literature has been mobilised as a discourse so that no matter what cultural diversity its particular aesthetic and formal configurations might reflect, it ends up serving the geopolitical and sociocultural ends of institutions often at odds with what that literature sets out to accomplish. This can be seen in the historical use of the English language to reinforce cultural influence over non-English speaking linguistic communities. This occurred under the Charter Act of 1813, when the British Administration attempted to reinforce British values among Indian people during the Raj (rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent). English literature became a vehicle for imperial authority. It was conceived as a dynamic force. Depending on how it was read, by whom and under what conditions, its influence could be pervasive and nuanced. Ways of reading, it was understood, drastically change what the reader perceives to be the meaning or message of texts. 

In Indian Education: Minute of the 2nd of February (1835) British politician and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay argued that since “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India”, the only purpose of British education in India was the creation of Indian intermediaries who could be “a class of interpreters between the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect”. His program of cultural conditioning needed a secular curriculum, and the English literary canon was thus introduced into India well before it became a part of the general education system in Britain. It has been argued that the cultural authority of Shakespeare, Spenser, Sterne and Milton and the later works of Eliot, Bronte, Dickens and Hardy, together with the way Indian readers were taught to look at them perpetuated the history of colonial expropriation, material exploitation and class and race oppression underpinning European world dominance. 

Indeed, a later evaluation of the hegemonic cultural control exercised by the British Administration notes its effectiveness in deploying the discourse of English literature. As it was disseminated, so too were attendant spiritual values, cultural assumptions, social discriminations, racial prejudices, and humanistic values which remained uncontested. In other circumstances, if read differently and without the support of Anglo-Saxon hegemony, “Britishness” may not have been read as the embodiment of universal values and the Englishman may not have been construed through literature as the epitome of civilised behaviour. In institutions with the intent to educate, these texts were taught by teachers so that they had specific, culturally acceptable meanings — ones that disallowed alternative or resistant readings. This is an example of literature being used hegemonically. But only because it was taught so, did it do so. These teachings are not necessarily complete or total; for example, a reader can still be inculcated into a hegemonic position through reading a novel resistantly to ideas of gender, but perhaps not being able to read ideas about race resistantly. As former British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli said in his novel Tancred (1881): “The East is a career.”

Thus, lecture halls and classrooms are places of unequal power (and have been for hundreds of years) and that the texts that students are directed to, the way these texts are taught and the lenses through which they are read can be vital to the process of establishing and maintaining socio-political control of cultural production. What then can be said about the diversity of the courses offered at ANU?

In fact, when I first came to ANU, I had hopes of being an English major. But in my first two years, I encountered significant difficulty with the small course offerings, and honestly felt like I had been cheated by the Programs and Courses pages which made English seem like a vibrant and fascinating area of study. I ended up doing courses that I had little personal investment in, and reading texts that I felt did not expand my worldview and challenge me in the ways I had hoped. 

Now, having completed a minor in English, it seems like there are many more English courses on offer and the claim that CASS makes above about its diversity is closer to being satisfied. But I am still asking myself questions about whether English courses and reading lists — no matter if they are created by a single professor/convener/lecturer, or indeed by the faculty as a whole — replicate and reinforce distinct ideas about the place of literature and language in contemporary, post-colonial Australia.

Looking at the courses on offer this semester, there are many that can be determined to be in alignment with ideas of diversity, inclusion and reading outside of the narrow box of canonicity. Notably, ‘Strange Home: Rethinking Australian Literature’ rests on the notion that literature shapes social words and there is scope to understand and examine the breadth of cultural production in modern Australia. On the other hand, ‘Jane Austen History and Fiction’ has, at least in my opinion, a different kind of importance. 

At face value, it could be seen to be the antithesis of diversity; students read five novels by Austen and focus on Britain at the time, as well as Austen’s own literary and historical significance. Sounds like a possible exercise in hegemony, right? The course could, at least potentially, be a class examining the supreme status of early British work, and reinforce these ideas about the innate cultural and social value of early British works that are often already deeply embedded within (institutionalised) literary studies. Austen’s works are so canonical, so clearly recognised over time by institutions of cultural production that readers come to them with so many unexamined assumptions. These texts have a populist meaning that is largely disconnected from the texts themselves. Austen’s works have received a great deal of approval from the standpoint of cultural heritage as well as significant popular currency. Pride and Prejudice, for example, is a deeply entrenched canonical work with an entire industry behind it. Even if you haven’t read Pride and Prejudice, you probably know something about the plot and the characters, maybe you’ve even watched the BBC series, or the film, or perhaps you’re familiar with Bridget Jones. In these circumstances it is possible to say that the reader has been given all the information they need regarding how to value the text and its messages before they even read the novel. It is because of this that I find the offering of this course to be counter-hegemonic, and inclusive, at least potentially. Especially because a work like Pride and Prejudice is inexorably located in particular moments in British cultural history, to read it from an Australian 21st Century perspective in a British settler-invaded nation shaped in so many ways by British cultural imperialism, can inform a legitimate non-hegemonic strategy. The fact that the course list for the English major contains courses that have the ability — both overtly and subtly — to engage critically with important moments in literary history grants students and staff the ability to think deeply and examine critically the work in question and its context. This is clearly an exercise in deconstructing hegemony.

My reading is supported by the ‘living tree’ of Canadian Law doctrine, which refers to a method of constitutional interpretation that allows for future change and evolution of statutes and interpretations while still acknowledging the original intentions of these texts. Some Canadian Law experts firmly believe that literary works operate in a similar way, with readers bringing to them what they know, how they read, their aesthetic preferences, and the political ideologies that govern their lives. According to Canadian Law expert, Benjamin Authers, the author of a text plants a seed that has the ability to grow or wither with the reader. People read as communities. Explicit examples of such communities include a book club, an English class, or a public reading of a work. “But even when they are reading independently, people read as part of their own cultural context, engaging with a text in complex ways,” says Authers. Understanding and appreciating a piece of literature is determined by how one can transfer the concepts and words to new situations. During this process, several types of interaction happen; interaction between experience and the text, interaction between author’s culture and reader and interaction of the reader with other readers.

Accordingly, when choosing courses off the English major list, I encourage you to think about how one course, when paired with another, can disrupt, reinforce, challenge or pluralise the learnings gained from your other English courses. Even though texts can align themselves with hegemonic views, be written to serve a particular “purpose” or may be used as instruments of cultural dominance but hegemony itself is not an in-dwelling property that emanates from their pages. Students of English are granted the opportunity to examine and disrupt power on every page. 

“Books are mirrors, you only see in them what you already have inside you,” wrote author Carlos Ruiz Zafrón in The Shadow of the Wind.