Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

academia, and thus participate actively in contributing to exchanges of cultural capital.
Hence, this constant opposition guarantees a certain balance, or equilibrium, between the
various political agendas presented by advocacy groups.
Yet there is one particular category of text whose status and position across these
series of polarizing forces remains ambiguous, for its purpose, some would argue, is
specifically to provoke, shock, and discomfort. In other words, these texts transgress the
boundaries of what is acceptable or permissible, even within the supposedly permissive
culture of the university. Books that seek this distinction of “radical otherness” are
usually ghettoized by the literary establishment, within the western tradition, however,
there seems to be a genuine legacy of works that have been labeled as transgressive at
various time periods. From Justine to the The Flowers of Evil, Ulysses to The Naked
Lunch, or even Native Son, all stirred major public upheavals during their respective
publications only to be canonized later, once the threat of their taboo-breaking properties
had been assimilated through a series of negotiations regarding their cultural capital. The
common denominator among most transgressive literature is that it stirs major public
upheaval when first published and as a consequence is either condemned, banned, put to
trial, simply ignored, and/or ghettoized by the establishment as an effective way of
neutralizing its threat. Perhaps not surprisingly so, as the establishment changes—or, as
Jacques Derrida would put it, as the center is decentered—so does the perception of these
works, and consequently, as they are interpreted, and distributed, their exchange value as
cultural capital is reappraised.
Traditionally, following in the footsteps of Plato’s strict moral code of social
righteousness, the institutional core of social, moral, and artistic mores was dictated for
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