ABSTRACT
In recent years the debates about the literary canon have intensified over questions about which works ought to make up the ‘new’ canon, the relationship between literature and literacies, and how curricular efforts to address reading (and teaching) literature ought to proceed. Well-intentioned policy-makers and educators have often assumed that by including newly recognized and ‘representative’ works of literature in compulsory education, students might be persuaded to develop a more pluralistic and multicultural vision of the nation, its history, and its people (Banks, 1994). As Britzman, Santiago-Valles, JimenezMunoz, and Lamash have reported, however, educational programs developed from these assumptions have failed, for the most part, to anticipate the contestations which arise among school actors when issues of race, gender, sexuality and so on are raised for consideration (Britzman et al., 1993). The ‘polyspatial’ and conflictual terrains of power (Grossberg, 1993:102) which characterize the production of personal and cultural knowledge have been undertheorized in curricular projects to construct a more just society.
