Should Joyce be canceled for misogyny? Conrad for racism?

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Because I am someone who has been trained and nurtured by the literature of the past, I have had to come to terms with the fact that some of the writers whose works I love the most have ideas that I hate.

Anti-Semitism, racism and misogyny are ingrained in Western culture, and it would take a heroic moral imagination to overcome them. Some great writers have done it: George Eliot, Tourgueniev, Ford Madox Ford. But most did not.

And so when I meet TS Eliot or the anti-Semitism of Dostoyevsky, the racism of Joseph Conrad or Flannery OConnors, the aversion of Henry James or Willa Cathers for darker immigrants, the misogyny of Flaubert or Joyces, I have to ask myself whether or not I should refuse the gifts that writers have. gave me, aesthetics of course, but also gifts of wisdom and understanding of the complexities of being human

When I was trained to read in the late 1960s and early 1970s, New Criticism reigned supreme. I was told that the writer’s life, or any ideas he or she had outside of the work I was reviewing, was irrelevant.

Now, it seems some thinkers are insisting that the destructive ideas the writer embraced requires that we stop reading their work, whether or not the ideas show up in actual work.

For example, Eliot’s indisputable anti-Semitism does not enter into The Four Quartets, and Henry James’ Nativism does not mar the incomparable ideas of Dove Wings. But some thinkers would insist that these writers be banned because of their inherent prejudices.

Family analogy

The family analogy comes to mind. Suppose you have an uncle who ruins every family vacation with his drunken tirades, but was the first to read your childish poetry and introduce you to Emily Dickinson. It makes no sense to pretend, by spilling the bottle of red wine on the white linen tablecloth, that it is not tampered with. But do you want to stop inviting him?

Earlier in the evening, having a beautiful tenor voice, he delighted people around the table by singing everyone’s favorite song and presenting new ones they had never heard. Thus, the family agrees to tell the children that their uncle has a problem, and that it is normal for them to disappear into the basement when it becomes too disturbing.

But what about the uncle who is not just a drunkard, but a sexual abuser? Does the family keep inviting him after he traumatized the children in the house? No, he should be banned. This is where the family analogy breaks down for me because I don’t believe there are any works that should be, so to speak, banned, never taught or read.

It is much easier to simply ban the difficult, injured and offensive pilots on the reading journey than it is to do the difficult job of contextualization.

I sometimes feel a sort of libidinal pleasure in some of those who get excited to throw the pilot overboard. Living with ambiguity brings no quick relief, and no protection from the blinding light of evil ideas.

But maturity of thought means that we have to understand that the history of the human species is full of hatred, error, and will to harm. It probably always will be. Who knows what future generations will consider unforgivable in us?

It is a blessing of civilization that some progress has been made in the history of ideas, but one is born when and where one is born, and the limits of time and geography are inevitable and must be recognized.

We cannot regard the great figures of the past as undefiled examples: we, as people inhabiting the present, must look directly at the stained hands of those who have given us beauty, joy and understanding.

Our job is to dig into the treasure of the greatness of the past, to separate the diamonds from the rot. Don’t Cancel, with those words suggesting that what has been canceled doesn’t even need to be reviewed. Our responsibility is neither to erase nor to cover. But to watch. To see. To witness.

Mary Gordon is a writer of novels, stories and memoirs as well as Professor Emeritus of English at Barnard College, Columbia University, New York. His latest novel, Payback, is published by Pantheon

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