Yes And/Or No: A Manifesto Against the Canon

No to immovability.

No to the proper.

No to sacred cows.

No to feeling guilty about pleasure.

No to thought over feeling or feeling over thought.

No to making algorithms out of human beings.

No to populism and elitism.

No to the canon that is racist, sexist, homophobic, and classist.

No to unconditionally loving or hating a work, which disregards its complexity, as well as our own.

No to vowing to love or hate a work forever, which implies that the work is dead.

No to The Beatles and Céline Dion. No to William Shakespeare and R.L. Stine. No to Alfred Hitchcock and Ed Wood. No to Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Mia Michaels.

Yes to fluidity.

Yes to the defiant.

Yes to sacrificed cows.

Yes to deriving pleasure from guilt.

Yes to feeling and yes to thought.

Yes to making algorithms more human.

Yes to individuals having personal experiences with a diversity of works.

Yes to disagreeing with the popular opinion so that the canon can live and breathe.

Yes to loving and hating a work for different or for the same reasons.

Yes to loving a work one day and hating it the next because the work is alive and so are we.

Yes to The Beatles and Céline Dion. Yes to William Shakespeare and R.L. Stine. Yes to Alfred Hitchcock and Ed Wood. Yes to Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Mia Michaels.