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Why Literature?
Identity, or the self, is created through language. We are a collection of labels: Adidas on my shoes, Nike on my back, Puma on my jacket, Arabic on my face, terrorist on your mind, a believer on Tuesday, an atheist on Wednesday, agnostic by Thursday. Young today, you tomorrow. All working together to form the idea of “me.” However, find me someone with the same labels and there will be a difference—excuse the cliché, but we are all unique. The problem, then, is that these linguistic labels, in all their plenitude, do not allow for the rise of the individual.
Thus, we find ourselves outside of labels, outside of words—but not outside of existence, and hence, we feel alienated from ourselves because the words that contain us do not define us. Why English then? How does the study of English literature fit into the question of individual being? Essentially, who are you, and how can English help find out who you are? If the problem posited is that no labels are adequate, or individual enough, to capture our self-hood, the only avenue left, in my mind, is self-creation.
Create the words that describe you. Yet, these words have to be understood by the common cognomen of this world; in order to realize yourself, someone must realize you—but how does someone realize you through your language and not the labels presupposed by the dominant symbolic order?
We do this through metaphor. Metaphors become a subversive way in which to create the self while existing under the structures that be. Poetry, perhaps, is essentially a dissident struggle for identity. In order to find yourself—to realize who you are as an individual—you must write the metaphors of your own being. Metaphors arise from the imagination, an imagination that is cultivated through the arts—in this context, the study of English literature. Literature helps us realize ourselves on our pilgrimage towards metaphor.
Yet, the problem is twofold: If, more broadly, art is that which cultivates our identity, what if we are presented only with the artistry, or imagination, of capital industry? No change will come about. Art is the basis of change. If our imagination is cultivated through the imagination of a corporate capitalism that dominates the forms of communication, then the corporate mentality, or the corporate metaphor (e.g. money)—will continue decay the metaphors that stand in its way, (e.g. democracy) . Subsequently, to ask the question: "What transferable skills does an English degree give you?" is to succumb to the influence of the corporate imagination before you have given yourself the opportunity for growth.
The study of English literature democratizes identity by widening the space of language through metaphor. No one imagination stands atop the study of literature—to find yourself, look through the eyes of your own mind, unfetter your Fancy, as your own path is but a metaphoric step away.
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