ABSTRACT
This chapter conceptualizes the teaching of literature and the literary canon as an assemblage in order to describe forces of canon formation that occur both over time and in specific contexts. After outlining what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari mean by the concept of the assemblage, this chapter then builds on Manuel DeLanda’s assemblage theory by synthesizing Michel Foucault’s concepts of power relations and subject formation with assemblage theory. DeLanda delineates several dimensions of assemblages; some of which are the roles of the component parts of assemblages, processes that stabilize the identity of an assemblage, and processes that destabilize the identity of an assemblage. This chapter describes how various entities—including works of literature, teaching standards, anthologies, teachers, students, and surveillance mechanisms—work to define the teaching of literature but also change it. It calls attention to the various ways these entities interact to produce meaning and ascribe teachable value onto certain literary texts rather than others. These processes often become coded in textbooks, anthologies, and other teaching documents that make the literary canon appear rigid when in fact the literary canon and the teaching of literature are flexible and change over time through acts of resistance that put into play new relations of power that eventually re-stabilize the identity of the teaching of literature as an assemblage.
