The New English: Incorporating Indigenous Voice into the Canon

Kimo Armitage, English

Michael Puleloa, English

Historically, the literary canon written in the English language has been very exclusive. This paper explores the possibility of strengthening the canon by incorporating the literature of the people that Toni Morrison has termed the “racial Other.” Sources for this discussion have been culled from timely academic articles on his subject.  
    In this paper, there is a discussion of  “Minor Literature” as defined by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari as part of a historic consciousness which seeks to consolidate the entire community of non-Caucasian writers into what Toni Morrison calls the “racial Others.” According to Deleuze and Guattari, the three characteristics of this literature are “deterritorialization of the language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and the collective assemblage of enunciation.” (Delueze and Guattari, 166-167). It is important to note that of these characteristics; only the second is applicable to the literature of the “racial Other” because of the hegemonic oppression of native voice and language within its colonizing arm of influence.
    The rest of the paper is dedicated to analyzing select passages from the literary contributions, written in the English language, of the “racial Others” in the current mongrelization of English, which has been termed as the New English. The New English is the integration of an exemplary, everlasting canon which mongrelizes the literatures of the “racial Other” into the institution.