Aftermath as Affirmation: Re-Thinking the Classic After Hybridity
What is the classic today? As once-fierce debates over canonicity have receded into the background of contemporary literary and postcolonial studies, much remains unsettled about the validity of the classic, both as general category and specific contribution, within a hybridic and diachronic critical paradigm. Postcolonial literature has made characteristic use of the appropriation of “classic” texts as a means of de-stabilization (i.e., Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh). Yet, there have been no-less notable gestures (perhaps most prominently by J.M. Coetzee) toward the postcolonial as grounds for affirmation of the classic in literary production and criticism alike.
The potential implications of reconsidering the classic as a legitimate category for contemporary textual scholarship are manifold. The classic might be seen both to be undermined by, and to provide an alternative to, recent theorizing of the global within literary studies. In addition to facilitating alternate approaches to the postcolonial trend of “reckoning” through appropriation, the notion of the classic itself may be transfigured by this new context. How do we see the classic differently as we struggle to formulate new criteria for canonicity within hybrid, creole, diasporic and cosmopolitan literary contexts? Do exegetical considerations trump aesthetic ones in determining “classic” status outside the confines of formal or national traditions? Finally, how far can we push the idea of a classic without undermining its qualitative significance entirely?
Proposals might touch on a wide range of national literatures and global movements, as well as possible shortcomings of dominant theoretical trends in addressing the persistence of the classic as an idea in contemporary literature.