I am uncomfortable with this notion of infallibility. I am uncomfortable with the idea of the closed canon.
The demand is "to open the canon" so as to make it multicultural instead of "Eurocentric" and to make it represent adequately the concerns and writings of women and of ethnic, non-heterosexual, and other groups. Another demand is that the standard canon be stripped of its elitism and its "hierarchism"-that is, its built-in discriminations between high art and lower art-in order to include such cultural products as Hollywood films, television serials, popular songs, and fiction written for a mass audience. There is also a radical wing of revisionist theorists who, to further the political aim to transform the existing power-structures, demand not merely the opening, but the abolition of the standard canon and its replacement by marginal and excluded groups and texts.
A closed Canon does not mean a closed revelation. Every believer is the result of direct revelation (John et al 2000). It can never end. But since every person is subject to large number of forces in their thought and vision and spirit, they are subject to error of interpretation. Hence we test them against the Canon.
The views of defenders of the standard canon, like those of its opponents, range from moderate to extreme. The position of many moderate defenders might be summarized as follows. Whatever has been the influence of class, gender, race, and other special interests in forming the existing canon, this is far from the whole story. The canon is the result of the concurrence of a great many (often unexpressed) norms and standards, and among these, one crucial factor has been the high intellectual and artistic quality of the canonical works themselves, and their attested power to give delight, and to appeal to widely shared.....
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