The word "literary canon" denotes to a form of books, descriptions, and additional texts considered to be the most important and influential of a particular period or place. Take a 19th century American literature course, for example. One is being exposed to a version of a group of texts that, by one means or another, established itself as the representative of the authors, movements and essential historical events in America during the 19th century.
Explanation:
"At first, professional educators decided what would be canonized, as part of what they naturally did in creating a curriculum in any discipline," said Behrendt. In fact, in the early years, many of these professional educators were religious, that is, clergy or clergy related, which inevitably also brought a perceptible 'moral' or 'moral compass' approach in terms of which works were approved. . and sanctioned, and for what reasons. "
“The fees are always on closed communities: who is excluded is at least as important as who is included. It is the 'in' crowd that generally controls the inputs, which means that canonized or canonical writers closely resemble those who have judged them as 'important' or 'important' or 'classic,' "Behrendt said.
Therefore, it seems that canons will always be exclusive to some extent, which will limit our perspective on underrepresented text forms. For Behrendt, the Internet provides an avenue through which much of the world's written material can be freely accessed, potentially combating the deficiencies of the canon.
"The Internet has democratized access and exchange of information in a way that was previously impossible and even unimaginable," said Behrendt. “More and more written material is published every day, not only by Google Books or The Internet Archive, but also by major research libraries around the world, by local and regional libraries and archives, by private or semi-public archives, and by scholars. individual. In many ways, this vast amount of material is almost completely "unfiltered," because it is simply being made accessible to everyone without some kind of cultural "gatekeeper" to restrict what connects or who can see it. "
Unfortunately, Behrendt said, people have been conditioned to rely on knowledge arbiters and canonical suggestions, so the vast amount of information on the Internet can have a chilling effect.
Despite the ways in which canons can limit the need for critical thinking and thus create a population dependent on canons, Behrendt argued that society cannot simply eliminate them.
"I am afraid royalties are inevitable," said Behrendt. “See how our culture loves lists of all kinds. Top 10. Top 40. We are number 1. Category lists. "You can not miss it". "What is trend?" .
Behrendt added that this tendency to allow others to think about modern society takes power away from people by causing them to sacrifice their agency as free-thinking beings.
"The problematic thing is giving away our liberty and freedom of mind and action to the judgments of others," said Behrendt. “Go a little further down that path and you will find Big Brother looking at you from your laptop camera and touching your smartphone. The surest route to totalitarianism, be it political or intellectual, is to convince people that they don't need to think for themselves, that the authorities, the Establishment, will take care of all that for them. "
For Behrendt, the route to reducing the canon's potentially harmful influence on our society lies in empowering readers to think critically.
