[Mark Allinson]

Yes, mainstream shouldn't be a dirty word when applied as a qualifier to "poetry," but neither should a statement like, "Literary taste vanished, or was banished, from the curriculum when he was a student" be accepted at face value either. Whose literary taste?

Tom, as the quotation says, literary taste was indeed banished from the curriculum in most Western universities by the advent of post-modernism. The doctrine of the non-hierarchical relativity of all texts effectively means the end of taste, since no claim can be made that any one text is "better" than another. Pomo theory has no place for aesthetics, and the principle of hierarchy implies a "master/slave" situation which was politically unacceptable. Aesthetic taste still survives, of course, outside the academy, but no longer within it. With the element of aesthetics removed, the old "canonical" texts (which only support the colonialising patriarchy), could be replaced with a new canon of the "suppressed" or "marginalised" voices in literature. This is pure politics, or social studies at best, but has absolutely nothing to do with the appreciation of literary art.

I have absolutely no problem with the teaching of any of this politically-orientated stuff anywhere - so long as it is called by its correct name - either cultural studies, or gender studies, or racial studies.

My sole objection is that this is NOT literary studies, which has almost vanished, in Oz at least.

The best lampoon I have read on this pomo idea of the democratic, qualitative equality of all texts is this excerpt from Tom Stoppard's play, The Real Thing.


HENRY: Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly… [He clucks his tongue to make the noise.] What we're trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might … travel … [He clucks his tongue again and picks up the script.] Now, what we've got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting “Ouch!” with your hands stuck into your armpits. This isn't better because someone says it's better, or because there's a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of Lords. It's better because it's better. You don't believe me, so I suggest you go out to bat with this and see how you get on.

- From The Real Thing, by Tom Stoppard.


For the pomo academy there are only cudgels, and only a fascist says this one is “better” than that one.