Day: April 11, 2025

🌍 Reimagining the Canon Beyond “Writing Back”

Riemenschneider challenges the dominant pedagogical focus on postcolonial “writing back” narratives and urges a shift toward texts that imagine alternative futures and explore constructive possibilities.

“Should not our common procedure of prioritizing texts that are ‘writing back’ be modified by more frequently including examples that probe into or even construct possible ‘different worlds’?” (Riemenschneider, 2004, p. 106)

💸 Globalization as Cultural and Economic Erosion

The article highlights how globalization leads to both material dislocation and the erasure of local specificities, especially in postcolonial societies.

“Destroys local sites of production and jobs… impoverishing an ever increasing number of an unemployed workforce… lost to the circulation of goods” (p. 106)

📚 Teaching Gap in Literary Academia

Despite an active scholarly community, there is a disconnect between literary research and teaching practices, particularly in the realm of New Literatures in English.

“Academics pursue research… but rarely give much time to the challenge of teaching what they are studying” (p. 106)

📖 Canon vs. Context: The Globalization Dilemma

Riemenschneider questions whether popular Indian writers like Narayan, Rao, and Seth, whose works don’t address globalization directly, are still fitting in a course addressing global issues.

“Can we responsibly promote the study of such texts… whose basic concerns are certainly not the economic and social havoc brought about by globalization?” (p. 107)

🤝 Hybridity and Harmony in Historical Encounters

In discussing Dalrymple’s White Mughals, Riemenschneider points to historical periods where East and West coexisted, offering models of intercultural hybridity and mutual transformation.

“A time… of surprisingly widespread cultural assimilation and hybridity” (p. 107)
“That East and West are not irreconcilable… They have met and mingled in the past” (p. 108)

🏰 From Cultural Exchange to Imperial Domination

Imperial strategies under British governance, such as those of Lord Wellesley, shifted relationships from fusion to conquest, marking a decisive break with earlier hybrid models.

India became “a place to conquer and transform” instead of “a place to embrace and to be transformed by” (p. 108)

🚪 Barriers to Cultural Crossing in Fiction

Through Thalassa Ali’s A Singular Hostage, the article examines how fictional colonial encounters often reinforce cultural boundaries rather than bridge them.

“Mutual prejudices… never at any time would permit either party to cross the boundary line between their respective worlds” (p. 108)

🌐 Diaspora as a Space for Alternative Imaginations

Riemenschneider sees diasporic writing as a more productive terrain for imagining “different worlds,” offering possibilities of hybridity and coexistence not bound by nationalist constraints.

“Is it then correct to say that an imagined different world is possible, more or less, only in the diaspora?” (p. 109)

🧭 Inclusive Teaching in a Globalized World

He ends with a strong call to educators to rethink curricula that either overly conform to Western literary dominance or promote rigid cultural essentialism.

“We must resist both, the globalizing homogenization and levelling as well as a fundamentalist-inspired defence of differences” (p. 109)

📚 Postcolonial Theory

Riemenschneider contributes to postcolonial literary theory by questioning the over-reliance on “writing back” narratives and proposing that literature can also imagine alternate futures rather than only respond to the colonial past.

“Should not our common procedure of prioritizing texts that are ‘writing back’ be modified by more frequently including examples that probe into or even construct possible ‘different worlds’?” (p. 106)

🌍 Globalization Theory in Literature

The article bridges globalization studies with literary pedagogy by emphasizing how economic and cultural globalization impacts the production and teaching of English literature in formerly colonized societies.

“Globalization… is in the process of erasing not just local cultural specificities but threatening to annihilate their very economic and social underpinnings” (p. 106)

🧩 Hybridity and Cultural Theory

Through references to Dalrymple’s White Mughals, the article engages with the concept of intercultural hybridity, a key idea in the works of Homi Bhabha, by exploring instances of cultural mingling in colonial India.

“A time… of surprisingly widespread cultural assimilation and hybridity” (p. 107)

🛤️ Diaspora and Transnational Theory

The text highlights diaspora literature as a space where authors explore identity through cultural dislocation and hybridity, aligning with theories of transnationalism and global citizenship.

“Diaspora writing… focus[es] on the challenges and possibilities of cultural assimilation…” (p. 109)

🏛️ Canon Critique and World Literature

Riemenschneider critically assesses the canonization of certain Indian English writers, questioning whether literary syllabi should prioritize established names or more politically engaged, local voices.

“Many of which have by now attained canonical status… whose basic concerns are certainly not the economic and social havoc brought about by globalization” (p. 107)

🧑‍🏫 Pedagogical Theory / Literary Education

He foregrounds pedagogical responsibility in literary theory, pushing scholars to align their teaching with current socio-political realities rather than remain locked in outdated canons.

“What decisions do we take in aiding our students?… Can we responsibly promote the study…” (p. 107)

🌐 Cosmopolitanism and Ethical Criticism

The article resonates with ethical and cosmopolitan literary criticism by promoting the idea that literature should foster global understanding and resist both homogenization and essentialist nationalism.

“We must resist both, the globalizing homogenization… and a fundamentalist-inspired defence of differences” (p. 109)

🔍 Historiographic Metafiction / Narrative Theory

By incorporating historically-grounded texts like White Mughals and A Singular Hostage, Riemenschneider explores how fiction and non-fiction can re-narrate colonial encounters, a core idea in historiographic metafiction.

“Dalrymple’s brilliant historical study… not the familiar story of European conquest… but the Indian conquest of the European imagination” (p. 107)

🧭 Eurocentric Framing of Cross-Cultural Discourse

While the article advocates for global inclusivity, it paradoxically relies heavily on Western-authored texts (e.g., White Mughals, A Singular Hostage) to explore non-Western contexts, which may recenter Western perspectives in postcolonial studies.

The core examples are from William Dalrymple (British) and Thalassa Ali (American), potentially sidelining authentic indigenous voices.

📦 Limited Representation of Non-Indian Literatures

The article focuses almost exclusively on Indian or India-related texts, despite referencing “New Literatures in English” broadly. This regional limitation may weaken its claim to addressing the “global” comprehensively.

No significant mention of African, Caribbean, Aboriginal, or Pacific authors, which narrows the theoretical application.

🔍 Lack of Textual Analysis or Close Reading

Riemenschneider offers thoughtful thematic overviews but avoids in-depth literary analysis or textual critique of the works he discusses. This might appear more like a pedagogical essay than a rigorous literary-theoretical article.

The references to literary texts serve illustrative rather than analytical purposes.

🛑 Overgeneralization of Diaspora Writing

While highlighting diaspora literature as a site of cultural possibility, the article risks romanticizing hybridity and oversimplifying the diverse challenges faced by diasporic writers and communities.

“Is it then correct to say that an imagined different world is possible, more or less, only in the diaspora?” (p. 109) – This question itself may reduce diaspora writing to a monolithic category.

🎓 Abstract Pedagogical Proposals Without Implementation

Although Riemenschneider raises important questions about literary syllabi, the article lacks specific strategies or case studies on how to apply his pedagogical ideas in actual classroom settings.

The text ends with open-ended questions, but does not propose models for curriculum revision.

🧩 Neglect of Student-Centric Perspectives

While he emphasizes the teacher’s responsibility in choosing texts, the article omits any reflection on student reception, engagement, or learning outcomes—key elements in contemporary pedagogical theory.

📊 Minimal Engagement with Contemporary Theory

The article implicitly invokes theorists like Homi Bhabha (on hybridity), but it does not explicitly engage with or cite major voices in postcolonial or globalization theory, which limits its intertextual depth.

📚 Cultural studies was born out of a deliberate rejection of traditional disciplines such as literary studies, film studies, and art history. Yet, as Frow clarifies, this rejection was not of the aesthetic object itself, but of the normative frameworks that governed its placement and value:

“It is important to be clear that this was a refusal not of the object itself… but of the normative discourses within which the object and its ‘placing’ were defined” (p. 44).

🎭 However, this strategic distance eventually became a limitation, as it occluded crucial discussions of value within cultural texts — including literature — which cultural studies set out to theorize.

📖 Three Modes of Literary Emergence

1. 📘 Reflexive Fiction and Truth in Literature
   Frow identifies epistemological reflexivity in works like The Radetzky March and Don Quixote, where literature reflects on itself through layers of truth and fiction.

“The narrative of a resistance to Literature has itself become a work of literature” (p. 45).

2. 📰 The Corruption and Commodification of Literature
   In Lost Illusions, literature appears within a sociological reflexivity, entangled in journalism, commodification, and industrial production.

“The literary… is torn between the two and whose defining character is its status, and its dissatisfaction with its status, as a thing to be bought and sold” (p. 47).

3. 🎤 Lyric Memory and Epiphany in Poetry
   Frank O’Hara’s The Day Lady Died presents lyrical emergence, where literature arises in a temporal rupture, transcending the mundane through memory and voice.

“The ‘emergence’ of the literary… is the effect of this shift of planes from the mundane to the epiphanic moment of memory” (p. 48).

⏳ Dual Temporality and Historical Value of the Literary

⚖️ Literature exists simultaneously as a historical institution and as a momentary event in reading. This creates a tension between canon formation and fleeting readerly experience.

“The concept of literary emergence… specifies a dual temporality: on the one hand… an act of reading; on the other… a structure of historical value” (p. 49).

📘 Frow challenges universal definitions of literature, noting that all such claims are normative and reflect institutionalized regimes of value rather than inherent qualities.

“Any attempt now to define the literary as a universal… fails to account for the particular institutional conditions of existence” (p. 49).

🏛️ The Literary Regime: Texts, Readers, and Institutions

🔧 Frow proposes the idea of a “literary regime”—a set of social and interpretive structures that assign value to texts and determine how they are read.

“The concept of regime shifts attention from an isolated and autonomous ‘reader’ and ‘text’ to the institutional frameworks which govern what counts as the literary” (p. 50).

📺 This regime is not superior to other cultural forms like film or television. Instead, it is simply one among many regimes of cultural value, shaped by relations, not essences.

“No special privilege attaches to a literary regime except insofar as such a privilege can be enforced by political means” (p. 51).

🔄 Reading as a Recursive and Relational Practice

🔍 Frow suggests we move away from fixed textual meanings and instead view reading as a dynamic practice, involving multiple layers of interpretive framing: from content to form, to technique, to institutional regimes.

“Textuality and its conditions of possibility are mutually constitutive and can be reconstructed only from each other” (p. 52).

🧠 Interpretation becomes a historical mediation, where meaning arises between the moment of writing and the moment of reception — not rooted in either alone.

“Any text which continues to be read… will in some sense not be the ‘same’ text” (p. 53).

🔄 Rethinking the Discipline of Literary Studies

🎓 Frow critiques the current state of literary studies as fragmented — divided between ethical, deconstructive, political, and bellettristic approaches — and lacking a unified theoretical core:

“In one sense, the discipline of literary studies is flourishing… in another, it has become lost in irrelevance” (p. 54).

🛠️ He advocates for a renewed literary pedagogy based not on canon or theory, but on a generalizable, reflective practice of reading that bridges literary and non-literary forms.

“It must be at once continuous with and richer than untutored practice… and be extrapolated from ‘literary’ texts to other discursive kinds” (p. 54).

⚡ The Ambivalence of Literary Emergence

🌀 Frow closes by noting that every instance of literary emergence simultaneously enacts and undermines the concept of literature itself. Literature, in this view, is inherently unstable, defined by the contradictions that animate it:

“These texts… can be taken as a figure for the institution of a reading that would at once display and displace the literary regime” (p. 55).

✅ In Summary:
John Frow’s essay is a critical reconfiguration of the boundaries and assumptions of literary studies. By analyzing how literature emerges across texts, regimes, and historical contexts, Frow opens the door to a relational, politically aware, and reflexive understanding of literature’s role within cultural studies.

📚 1. Poststructuralism & Reflexivity

🔍 Contribution: Frow extends poststructuralist ideas by exploring literature’s self-reflexive nature—its capacity to question and remake itself.

“The narrative of a resistance to Literature has itself become a work of literature” (p. 45).
🌐 Theoretical Tie: Builds on Paul de Man and poststructuralist thought, where language is unstable and meaning is deferred.
“The literary constitutes… a language aware of its own rhetorical status and its inherent liability to error” (p. 49).

🏛️ 2. Institutional Theory (Sociology of Literature)

📦 Contribution: Introduces the idea of the “literary regime”—institutions and social forces that define, categorize, and give value to literature.

“Texts and readings count as literary or nonliterary by virtue of protocols which govern this distinction” (p. 50).
🏛️ Theoretical Tie: Deepens Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and Tony Bennett’s work on cultural institutions, showing how literary meaning is socially regulated.

🌀 3. Reader-Response Theory (Relational Reading)

👁️ Contribution: Frow reorients attention from the text itself to the relation between the reader, the text, and its framing conditions.

“Reading… moves from a focus on a ‘text’… to the relation between a text and the set of framing conditions” (p. 52).
📖 Theoretical Tie: Expands on Stanley Fish and Wolfgang Iser by emphasizing the historical and institutional embeddedness of interpretation.

⏳ 4. Historicism / New Historicism

📜 Contribution: Proposes that literature’s meaning is always subject to changing regimes of reception, contesting any fixed or timeless interpretation.

“Any text which continues to be read… will in some sense not be the ‘same’ text” (p. 53).
🧭 Theoretical Tie: Resonates with Stephen Greenblatt’s New Historicism in viewing literature as deeply entwined with historical conditions of both production and reception.

🧩 5. Cultural Studies / Anti-Canonism

🚫 Contribution: Argues against fetishizing the literary canon, calling instead for a theoretically aware and socially situated analysis of literature.

“The exclusion of the literary… was a strategic delimitation… but there is no reason… why this exclusion should continue” (p. 53).
📚 Theoretical Tie: Extends Stuart Hall’s cultural studies framework, encouraging integration of literary studies into the broader matrix of cultural regimes.

🧠 6. Critique of Universalism

🧱 Contribution: Refutes attempts to offer a unified, essentialist definition of literature by demonstrating its institutional and historical variability.

“Any attempt now to define the literary as a universal or unitary phenomenon… falls into the fetishism of a culture of social distinction” (p. 49).
📘 Theoretical Tie: Counters structuralist views (like Frye’s archetypes) by arguing for the pluralism and contingency of literary value.

🔧 7. Pedagogical Theory / Literary Education

🎓 Contribution: Reframes literary education as training in critical reading practices, not the transmission of timeless cultural value.

“What might count as useful knowledge… is less the imparting of systematic information than the teaching of a practice” (p. 54).
🛠️ Theoretical Tie: Contributes to critical pedagogy (e.g., Freire, Giroux), emphasizing interpretation as an empowering, reflective act.

⚖️ 8. Value Theory in Literature

📈 Contribution: Reopens the question of value in literature—not as eternal or intrinsic, but as socially and semiotically produced.

“The very force of its initial refusal of the normative has become a problem… it occludes those questions of value” (p. 44).
💬 Theoretical Tie: Challenges both formalism and radical relativism, offering a balanced, relational approach to literary valuation.

🧬 Summary

John Frow’s “On Literature in Cultural Studies” doesn’t simply intervene in literary theory—it restructures its foundation by:

• Breaking down the boundaries between disciplines
• Introducing the flexible but rigorous concept of regimes
• Centering historical, institutional, and relational dynamics in literary meaning

It is a call for theory after theory, where critical reflection and cultural embeddedness take priority over rigid categories and static canons.

⚖️ 1. Relativism vs. Rigorous Criteria

📌 Criticism: Frow’s call for “relative relativism” may lead to a theoretical impasse where no stable criteria remain to distinguish meaningful from arbitrary interpretation.

His dismissal of universal literary value might be read as undermining normative critical judgment.

🔎 Why it matters: Without shared evaluative frameworks, literary criticism risks becoming purely contextual and losing its capacity to critique broader systems.

🌀 2. Vagueness in the “Literary Regime”

📌 Criticism: The term “literary regime”—while conceptually rich—is ontologically overloaded, blending institutional, textual, semiotic, and social dimensions without clear boundaries.

This may confuse rather than clarify how regimes function practically in shaping reading.

🔎 Why it matters: Readers may struggle to distinguish what counts as a regime versus broader cultural influence or personal interpretation.

🎯 3. Undervaluing the Aesthetic Dimension

📌 Criticism: By focusing on cultural and institutional framing, Frow potentially downplays the aesthetic and affective power of literature itself.

His emphasis on external regimes may neglect the formal innovations, beauty, or style of literary texts.

🔎 Why it matters: Many argue that literature’s unique value lies in its affective and stylistic power, not just its social embeddedness.

🧱 4. Risk of Disciplinary Dilution

📌 Criticism: Frow’s encouragement of interdisciplinary openness might inadvertently dissolve the specificity of literary studies into broader cultural studies.

“Literature” becomes just another “regime,” losing its traditional disciplinary coherence.

🔎 Why it matters: Some literary theorists fear this undermines the distinctive tools and methods of close reading, genre study, and formal analysis.

🗃️ 5. Abstract Overload and Accessibility

📌 Criticism: Frow’s language is dense and steeped in theoretical jargon, making the essay less accessible to non-specialists or students new to literary theory.

Terms like “hermeneutic bootstrapping” or “axiological regimes” can alienate readers unfamiliar with poststructuralist discourse.

🔎 Why it matters: For a piece partly about pedagogy and reading practices, the lack of clarity may hinder its impact in the classroom.

🧭 6. Limited Engagement with Non-Western Literatures

📌 Criticism: Frow’s analysis is heavily Euro-American, drawing examples only from Western canonical texts (Roth, Cervantes, Balzac, O’Hara).

This limits the scope of his claim that “literary value is institutionally constructed” across global cultural contexts.

🔎 Why it matters: A more inclusive global literary critique would enhance his argument about the variability of regimes across cultures.

🔍 7. Minimal Discussion of Reader Agency

📌 Criticism: While Frow critiques autonomous conceptions of the “reader,” he doesn’t give enough space to the lived experience and agency of actual readers.

His concept of the reader as a “function” within a regime may overlook how individuals interpret texts creatively or resist dominant regimes.

🔎 Why it matters: Ignoring reader subjectivity risks reducing reading to mere effects of institutional power.

🧠 Summary:

Frow’s essay is a seminal intervention in redefining the relationship between literary studies and cultural theory—but it also opens itself to critiques related to:

• theoretical overreach 🌀
• undervaluing form and aesthetics 🎨
• abstract language barriers 🧱
• Western-centrism 🌍