Weeks after the death of Nobel Prize-winning author Alice
Munro last year, her daughter Andrea Skinner disclosed the sexual abuse she'd
suffered as a child—abuse about which Munro had known and stayed silent. The
disclosure is but one of many revelations in recent years to upend the legacy of a cultural
icon. Neil Gaiman, Louis CK, Jean Vanier, and Avital Ronell are only a few
public figures to be reassessed in the wake of accounts of sexual abuse. Similarly,
disputed claims to Indigenous ancestry touted by artists including novelist
Joseph Boyden and singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie have generated outrage
and heartbreak among Indigenous groups and innumerable admirers, compounding
generational traumas.
How do we address works of deep cultural meaning when the moral failings of
their creators are exposed? Karen Guth identifies various responses to what she
terms “tainted legacies”: from the Separationist view that the actions of the
creator have no bearing on the work to the Abolitionist rejection of all work
from a discredited creator. Guth advocates instead for what she calls the
Reformer position, which seeks to unearth the social and institutional roots
that enable abuses, with an imperative to learn from the past so we can create
conditions of justice for the future. Guth's call for a reckoning with the past
that charts a way forward guides this seminar. How might we excavate the
conditions that facilitate and perpetuate inexcusable behaviour from artistic,
religious, or cultural authorities? What can we learn by returning to texts
that we now see in a new light? How might we guide new formations of cultural
production and reception? Where can we find seeds of regeneration in troubled and troubling histories?