Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars

by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Multiculturalism. It has been the subject of cover stories in Time and Newsweek , as well as numerous articles in newspapers and magazines around America. It has sparked heated jeremiads by George Will, Dinesh D'Sousa, and Roger Kimball. It moved William F. Buckley to rail against Stanley Fish and Catherine Stimpson on "Firing Line." It is arguably the most hotly debated topic in America today--and justly so. For whether one speaks of tensions between Hasidim and African-Americans in Crown Heights, or violent mass protests against Moscow in ethnic republics such as Armenia, or outright war between Serbs and Bosnians in the former Yugoslavia, it is clear that the clash of cultures is a worldwide problem, deeply felt, passionately expressed, always on the verge of violent explosion. Problems of this magnitude inevitably frame the discussion of "multiculturalism" and "cultural diversity" in the American classroom as well.
In Loose Canons , one of America's leading literary and cultural critics, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., offers a broad, illuminating look at this highly contentious issue. Gates agrees that our world is deeply divided by nationalism, racism, and sexism, and argues that the only way to transcend these divisions--to forge a civic culture that respects both differences and similarities--is through education that respects both the diversity and commonalities of human culture. His is a plea for cultural and intercultural understanding. (You can't understand the world, he observes, if you exclude 90 percent of the world's cultural heritage.) We feel his ideas most strongly voiced in the concluding essay in the volume, "Trading on the Margin." Avoiding the stridency of both the Right and the Left, Gates concludes that the society we have made simply won't survive without the values of tolerance, and cultural tolerance comes to nothing without cultural understanding.
Henry Louis Gates is one of the most visible and outspoken figures on the academic scene, the subject of a cover story in The New York Times Sunday Magazine and a major profile in The Boston Globe , and a much sought-after commentator. And as one of America's foremost advocates of African-American Studies (he is head of the department at Harvard), he has reflected upon the varied meanings of multiculturalism throughout his professional career, long before it became a national controversy. What we find in these pages, then, is the fruit of years of reflection on culture, racism, and the "American identity," and a deep commitment to broadening the literary and cultural horizons of all Americans.

Genres: Race, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, African American, Essays

199 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 1992

About the author

Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. is a Professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. He is well-known as a literary critic, an editor of literature, and a proponent of black literature and black cultural studies.

Reviews

[Zach Irvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I snagged this book when a professor sent out an email saying they wanted to get rid of most of the books in their office. I'm really glad that this was one of their top recommendations. It's an assortment of separate papers that link thematically to one another. Gates talks about the formal and informal systems and institutions that led to the formation of the Western canon, the ways those institutions systematically ignored works by people of color, the irruption of politics into literary study and critical theory and how race is not actually a thing. The book blends literature, history, theory and personal narratives into an incisive probing of American culture and the anonymous yet familiar and personal faces that have supported the oppression that is, unfortunately, America's trademark. The section that stands out to me at the moment recalls the death of Edmond Laforest, a Haitian intellectual who committed suicide by tying a Larousse dictionary to his neck and jumping into a river. I'm not sure why it stands out to me, just a powerful image.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s take on anything is always worth reading. He unfailingly brings a razor sharp perception and knife-edged analysis, and matches it to an uncanny sensibility, delivering his verdict in unstoppably fine prose. But, like the Simpsons, sometimes the references to American-based issues leave me a touch baffled. But that's hardly his fault.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a read for school. I remember it being a series of arguments for including a broader voice of authors and subjects into what is considered the "American Literary Canon."

[Scott Satterwhite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting read covering the so-called "Culture Wars" of the 1980s and early 1990s. In some ways, the struggles feel very timely but also sad knowing how an accendent right has pushed the academic progress Gates heralds in this text back decades, at least. Gates' book shows that the battle for Black Studies is not new, and that it is increasingly important to continue teaching and studying African American literature.

Lastly, his two detective noir mysteries were really fun and creative ways to discuss who makes literary canonization and why others don't.

[Brenda Conry · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection. Some were a bit too academic for my casual reading (assuming prior knowledge I don't have), but interesting. Several engaged my thinking, and two of what I will call short stories were pretty hilarious.

[RK Byers · Rating 2 out of 5]

Skip Gates knows alotta stuff. i don't think he processes anything, tho.

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a young man interested in the multicultural debates of 80s and 90s, I bought this book when it came out in hardback, but I never got around to reading it. Then, as the years went by, its relevance seemed to dissipate -- until today. Although my memory of the debates from the earlier era is slightly sketchy, my sense is that, weirdly, this book is MORE relevant today than when it was first published. The essays are uneven (there are two Hammett parodies, and one is much better than the other) but Gates's last piece articulates what I think is exactly how American education needs to balance the pseudo-conflict between the "Western Canon" and multicultural interests.

[Cyndi Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays about the past, present, and future of African American literature and multiculturalism. Although somewhat dated at times, the essays really expound in the need to redefine America through the literature we teach.