Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

Hence, according to Lauter, literatures of social minorities typically aim to subvert the
established social order of race, class, and gender, and when these texts become cultural
capital by their inclusion in the academic canon, they expose new generations of readers
to their once subversive now canonical ideas through increased circulation, negotiations,
and exchanges. Consequently, through the potential impact it can have on various
individuals, this repeated exposure promoted by changes at the cultural and/or
institutional level will also help propel changes at the social and political level. Yet it is
not only minority literature in particular that is empowering, all literature and all art can
be empowering. While Alice Walker emphasizes that “the power of the written word [is]
to reach, to teach, to empower and encourage—to change and save lives” (Walker in
Lauter 64), Lauter argues that “[a]rt cannot stand outside [the] struggle [for survival, for
space and hope]; on the contrary, it must play an important role in it …” (65).
As explained in Chapter One, the concept that changes at the institutional level
will promote social equality has been put in doubt by the likes of John Guillory, because
the culture of the school is in many ways a closed system. In contrast, political
subversion as it pertains to the literature of transgression is slightly more ambiguous and
intricate. The rationale behind artworks that aim to challenge state rule is that if the artist
is capable of making a sensation, of provoking shock or arousing controversy, he is
capable of awakening his audience to political issues to which they would have otherwise
remained indifferent. In other words, by relying on shock tactics, transgressive works
perpetrate acts of “artistic terrorism” in the event that they will purposely draw attention
to their “cause”— the subversive ideologies they are displaying and promoting.
“Politically resistant art both puts into question the legitimacy of state actions
84