ABSTRACT
The concept of a canon has had both pragmatic and idealistic connotations since its inception. Individual canonical works have been instruments of nationalism, invented traditions, and exclusive cultural identity, but they have also endured beyond specific historical contexts, affected cultures beyond that of their own origin, and transcended the immediate political interests. As much as canonical distinction relies necessarily on the division of labor and the reproduction of social relations, the notion of a canon of exemplary works is also an aesthetic ideal with a cognitive content that negates narrow assumptions about the affirmative or ideological character of art. More than just acknowledging human suffering and universal social injustice, art in modernity has become a corrective to instrumental reason and its strict empiricism. Contrary to the dogma of pragmatism, art is a politics of ends, not means. It is both a negation of what merely exists and a promise of what has yet to be.
