Exploring the Impact of English Literature on Cultural Identity in Multicultural Societies

Naser Idan Fadheel

doi:10.37547/ajsshr/Volume05Issue05-50

American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research

198

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VOLUME

Vol.05 Issue05 2025

PAGE NO.

198-212

DOI

10.37547/ajsshr/Volume05Issue05-50

Exploring the Impact of English Literature on Cultural
Identity in Multicultural Societies

Naser Idan Fadheel

Ministry of Education, Wasit Education Directorate, Uzbekistan

Received:

14 March 2025;

Accepted:

26 April 2025;

Published:

30 May 2025

Abstract:

Scholarly and popular investigations into how English literature shapes cultural identity in multiethnic

settings date back to the 1980s. The creation of South Africa as a rainbow nation, popularised and sensationalized
by the idea of the new nation's hospitality, is one such tangible or publicly visible occurrence. Despite severe
criticism and rejection, this national story has credibility and acknowledgment in the moral imagination of
individuals both within and outside of South Africa. Starting with the rainbow nation, this analysis will place the
rainbow narrative in the broader educational framework of how literature shapes cultural identities. It will also
critically examine both contemporary and esoteric literary and academic practices.

Introduction:

Cultural identity is a vital factor in the

inhuman environment of the modern globalized
system. Every individual belongs to a specific culture,
which plays a dominant role in shaping a

person’s

mindset and personality. Contemporary culture
debates focus on the impact of English literature on the
formation of cultural identity in the Third World.
English literature, as a fundamental subject in the
educational sector of many countries where English is
a first foreign language, has many impacts on the
sociocultural aspect of cultural identity.

Different peoples have different understandings,
backgrounds, and uses of their cultural identity. The
critical approach of cultural identity denies the concept
of culture as a fixed entity and theorizes group
identities as ever changing and multi-layered. English
literature has played a vital role in the formation of
contemporary cultural identity since many literature
texts have non-national and global aspects. Aspects of
femininity, imitative culture reflection, cultural clash
due to patriarchy, dictatorship, and colonization are
some examples of the social or sociocultural aspects
that have been reflected in these texts.

To investigate the impact of English literature on the
formation of cultural identity in Bhutanese, Indian, and
Sri Lankan societies, 20 respondents who are primarily
involved with the subject in various capacities have

been purposely selected. Respondents’ opinions have

been evaluated of the impact of English literature on
different dimensions of cultural identity, including

social identity and caste identity. Respondents’

opinions have also been analyzed on the use of culture
specific terms in English literature and on the shifting
of cultural identity due to the influx of English
literature. The analyses have shown the positive impact
of English literature from the educational, social,
imaginative, and sustainable development aspects, and
the negative impact on the social and societal values
and cultures.

The Role of Literature in Shaping Cultural Identity

The term culture refers to “the beliefs, values, norms,
and ways of life shared and created by a social group.”
Identity is the parts of an individual’s life that comprise

who one is, which includes ethnicity, nationality,

gender, and sexuality. A social group is defined as “a

collection of individuals who connect with each other

because of an identifiable social network,” and a
person’s social group can play a large part in shaping

who that person is as well. The beliefs, values, and
norms of the social groups an individual identifies with

significantly affect a person’s identity formation, and

literature plays a substantial role in shaping and
reinforcing culture. The diverse beliefs, values, and
norms found in culture can be represented as an
iceberg. The ideas regarding cultural identity often
constitute the tip of an iceberg, or textual and
observable, but the majority (the mass of the iceberg)

consists of the individual’s cultura

l beliefs and values

that thoughtlessly underpin and reinforce the overt
ideas. Hence, while there are fairly common and

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unanimous beliefs, values, and norms that shape a
cultural identity, these components can be
inconspicuous and little-known to even the individuals
themselves. Literature is one of the most effective and
effective means through which culture can influence
belief systems and norms. For one, literature is an

extensive and deep representation of culture; “in

fiction there is evidence and testimony witness to

beliefs and ways of life.” Therefore, additional

exposure to English literature not only supports the
diverse beliefs and values of multicultural identity
formation but also enables people in relatively
monocultural societies to more fully understand these
beliefs and values. Many new immigrants, especially
adolescents, find it difficult to integrate into American
identity partly due to cultural hints from literature and
media that are invisibly overlooked by lifelong
American residents. The difficulty of integrating into
the American culture may come from the difficult
understanding of slang or idiomatic expressions, which
can heavily emdiv cultural identity. There are many
covert hints in literature that heavily promote the
adopted values and beliefs. As (M. Withers, 2019)
discusses, literature is a means of teaching students to
adopt a culturally socialized paradigm of cultural
identity formation.

Historical Context of English Literature

In the 1830s and 1840s, writers in various countries
outside the British Isles produced very important works
of what has come to be termed "imperial" literature. In
number and quality this output far surpassed that of
earlier times, in England, India, and Africa. The whole
literature of this time descends, at least historically,
from the literature of the previous decades. This latter
was initially addressed to local audiences. But the
political and economic changes of the peer-dominated
1830s and 1840s led writers to address larger
audiences consisting not merely of United Kingdom or
British Empire subjects, but of "other" peoples as well
(e.g., colonized geostrategic, political, and physical
spaces such as India, SA, the Caribbean, and Central
and South America).

The historical stage is best illuminated by the novels of
"more southern" writers in these vastly different
countries, Joseph Conrad in the Caribbean;
Rabindranath Tagore in India; and J.M. Coetzee in
South Africa, treating various aspects of local
metropolitan, local literatures. In addressing these
multiple and cultural spaces, writers chose to move
outside the geographically and culturally circumscribed
world inhabited by the earlier writers, whom, in that
present, they felt themselves to belong to.
Inappropriately, but often with great subtlety, they also
addressed the universal questions of existence and

truth that had in the preceding decades been
mythologized in problem plays on British-born
predecessors, about or beyond the reach of their
culturally "purist" May-poles.

It was partly this fiction-writing iconoclasm that won
Tan's talented contemporary, Gingo Figueira, such
renown as poet, dramatist, novelist, and critic across a
wide cultural spectrum in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. He was born and bred in Goa, then
an erstwhile Portuguese colony, but settled in Bombay
and South Africa, a British colony. His exposure to and
idealization of British civilization and his literary
progeny both pursued such, and profound, spatial and
cultural translations, but with great erudition, wit, and
occasional levity and laughter (Cimarosti, 2015).

Multicultural Societies: An Overview

Cultural identity relates to one’s vision of the world and

the values that govern his/her own actions. In
multicultural societies, profound cultural groupings
tend to develop into communities defined by ethnic,
religious, or linguistic differences. Multiculturalism
provides an environment where cultures continue to
have their own identities and exist simultaneously with
others. However, it may also lead individuals of those
cultures to drift apart within relatively isolated groups.
Multiculturalism refers to a way of being and
possessing identity (Aziz, 2015). Group identity denotes
concepts such as race and ethnicity and their
psychological correlates. Cultural identity delineates an
internalized sense of identity with some larger,
established, and durable entities. It is created against
various entities, including the state, nations,
ethnicities, and civilizations, as well as sibling identities,
ones also projected by something akin to cultures and
possessed by states defined in cultural terms.

Multiculturalism first began as a policy for reconciling

and managing society’s diversity. Once in practice,
multiculturalism opened a Pandora’s box of

concerns:

global citizenship, transnationalism, identity politics,
assimilation, multicultural society vs. cosmopolitan,
and hybridism. The concerns of multiculturalism have
not only extended their reach but also become a
central part of contemporary literary criticism. Literary
representations suggest that multiculturalism has not
been a wholly benign idea or practice. Since post-
colonial practices in the third world countries of Africa
and Asia, one ought to lie beneath its deceptive
surface. Multiculturalism causes a devilish chaos in
societies. Certainly, multiculturalism would lead to
cultural assimilation, disintegration of ethnic, religious,
and linguistically distinct minorities, or ironically
regarded as emergent and artificial social groups.
Ironically,

in

many

European

countries,

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multiculturalism has been abandoned as failing to live
up to its promise of leading to full citizenship and
promoting a common identity, and the majority from
various immigrant streams is socially segregated in
ethnic enclaves. Some literatures on multiculturalism
regard it as an outgrowth of or post-modernism that
reconceptualizes the subject agency in a palimpsest
sense.

Influence of English Literature on Minority Cultures

It follows from the previous sections that the study of
English literature in languages other than English
country must take into account the history of English
over the last two centuries (Cimarosti, 2015). While
English linguists present the contemporary world as
pluricentric, its history is still being taught in many parts
of the world as monocentric and drenched in colonialist
ideology. Moreover, (M. Withers, 2019). In general,
Anglophone literature may be assimilated into the
country. But the differences that create the larger
problems in literature teaching in the Chinese context
arise from the specific treatment given to language,
culture, literary tradition, and literary analytic methods
here. Studies that examine English literature textbooks
in this light are scarce. The study takes Chinese EFL
Higher Education and the most widely used of its
English literature textbooks as a case in point. The
plethora

of

forces

at

work

in

textbook

selection/censorship and their disparate effects on
textual selection and non-selection is uncovered. The
search for and on textbooks sheds light on cultural
politics by revealing the struggles between
globalization and localization, expansionism and stasis,
and hegemony and resistance.

Case Study: Postcolonial Literature

For adoption and canonization of English literature in
postcolonized countries, critical analysis of English
literature written or published in the postcolonial
period has its own importance. Such a proposed
analysis may include a study on diasporic or migratory
writers or on non-English writers writing in English but,
ironically, English writers conveniently escape from it in
those postcolonial countries. A case in point is how
literature written by writers of African descent is
anthologized or included in the curriculum, but English
authors writing about Africa, like William Shakespeare,
Gabriel Okara, John Coetzee, and Doris Lessing, are
overlooked.

Theories

of

colonization

and

postcolonization may appear to be important
documents, yet those are all based on Indian, Sri
Lankan, or Caribbean contexts. The absence of any
attempts or theories on a critique of English literature,

except some incidental remarks in essays like “The
Novels in the History of the World” with references to

some postcolonial novels written in English, signals one
of the major gaps and may pave the way for future
research ((Novita) Dewi, 2016). By colonizing some
parts of the world, the British Empire felt the need to
civilize, educate, and rule them for their political and
economic interests. Colonized nations were deprived
of their past literature and motivated to create a new
canon in English literature. Literatures written by
British authors about the colored continent are
perhaps the most disheartening part of this
canonization as there is no theory or concept of how
such literature can be refuted in this postcolonial
period. Most of these writings portray barbaric or
savage descriptions of colonized nations and have

resulted in distrust, envisaging a ‘white racial
superiority.’ Moreover, no creative work, including

prose fiction, poetry, and drama, in English authored by
indigenous writers of this postcolonized African
continent has emerged reassuring appropriateness or
any positive effect. Some African postcolonial texts
necessitate demand analysis, but English literature
written about Africa is still an unexplored area of
research.

Case Study: African Diaspora Literature

This dissertation investigates African diaspora
literature published in a range of genres (long prose
fiction, short fiction, personal essays and poetry) and in
diverse socio-political contexts in order to weigh the
implications of the transnational evolution of that
literature and its situation within and between states,
regions and continents. Early in the twenty-first
century, the post-apartheid South African authors of
so-called 'post-black' diaspora literature provide a good
case study for examining exploration of the
implications of such state-formation, state-failure and
state-wide oppression on subjectivity and sense of
belonging with respect to identity categories
recognised in typically racialised societies (Rafapa,
2014). One such category is the 'black' identity category
externally imposed upon the authors' characters from
the vantage point of a white Afrikaner nationalist
regime that collapsed around the early 1990s. In and
after the collapse of that regime, new social categories
(e.g. 'affluence' and 'disaffluence') are suggested to be
inefficient, and have rendered the racialised existence

of a ‘black’ identity meaningless either as something to

escape from, or something to cling to.

'Post-black' representation from the South African
perspective is thus an example of how a literature
expresses a disruption of the assumptions on which
identity categories are founded within a given culture.
Dislocation provides scope for interrogating existing
belief systems. The African diaspora literature of the
post-apartheid South African authors in question,

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framed

in

the

discourse

of

diaspora

and

transnationalism in the current context of literary
study, is an expression of the questionings of the
primacy and rigidity of identities, and thus provides rich
analytical and theoretical ground for construing the
impact of literature on cultural identity in multi-cultural
societies. Furthermore, (re)locating in racialised
identification projection and disruption provides the
basis for identifying and exercising agency and
authorship in the face of power.

Language and Identity

In most learning situations, students have specific tasks
to complete, with the context determining the
constraints within which the task is completed.
However, in many countries, high-stakes broad-scale
assessment systems are in place to standardize

students’ performances with respect to currency. In

such contexts, perceptions of assessment conditions,
rationale, and properties influence assessment
judgments. As assessments are conducted outside the
classroom, it is often presumed that students assign
less importance to their physical characteristics than
during tests conducted in class, as illustrated by
ongoing debates about group differences in outcomes.
Importantly, however, the interaction context of a task
does not purely influence perceptions about its

characteristics. Performers’ perceived level of control,

self-efficacy, and importance, and the perceived value
of the activity and its properties are likely to affect

evaluation processes regardless of a task’s being

situated inside or outside the classroom. Hence,
differences in assessment locations lead to different
motivations for task completion, and must be
considered in assessment.

It is intuitively convincing that assessment location and
perceived importance of the assessment situation
should influence perceptions of its properties.
However, current postulations of the constraints and
informati

on input governing learners’ evaluations of

assessment situations typically do not provide specific
accounts of such influences. As both commonsense
beliefs and research evidence indicate that the
conditions under which take-home tasks had to be
completed largely differed, test location was viewed as
a likely basis for differences in perceptions of the task

properties (A. Dumitrašković, 2015). In western
societies, learners’ physical characteristics and a
learner’s geographic area of residence differ widely

.

There is an increased number of examinations of
different factors to account for performance
differences. These include status aspects such as
language proficiency, social background, gender and
self-beliefs. Considering the social structure in a
country, social class is likely to have a substantial

influence on the identity of children in terms of their
socialization

settings

and

subsequent

social

relationships in language learning as well as in the
perception of the learning conditions. Additionally,
how the classroom interaction is organized may
recreate, maintain, or change the social hierarchy
existing outside the classroom (Preece, 2016).

Literature as a Medium for Cultural Exchange

In multicultural societies, the interaction of cultures
and languages has led to a process of formation of
cultural identity. Literature plays a significant role in
this process. Literature refers to written works that
have artistic merit; it includes texts in all genres: prose,
poetry, drama, literary criticism, and essays (Cimarosti,
2015). The advent of English literature in a multicultural
society has immense impact on the culture of the
people. Literary texts reflect lives of people of the
society, so English literature holds an influential
position in multicultural societies. Texts of English
literature have a lot to say with regard to cultural
identity which is the result of the mixture of the
involved cultures on the beauty of space and time.
Multicultural societies flourish when different cultures
and languages come in contact with one another. The
effect of this contact lays the foundation for the
formation of cultural identity. Multicultural societies
represent cultural and linguistic variety, diversity, and
foreignness within a particular society. In the texture of
multicultural societies, different languages and
cultures undergo a constant process of transformation;
one culture enriches another culture though it is
sometimes resisted.

Language is one of the important means by which the
identity of individual and culture is expressed. The
recent emphasis given on proper teaching and learning
of a language is mainly through its literature, as literary
texts are reflections of lives of the people of a particular
culture. The production and consumption of the
literature of a language enriches the culture of the
people. The hegemony of English over other languages
has made the world of today an English world.
Acquiring proficiency in English is getting more and
more necessary for the students in the periphery
countries as English has been accepted as the sole
medium of instruction in almost all institutions of

higher education. борг литература has a great role to

play in the good knowledge of a language. Literary
texts, mainly the canonical texts produced in a
language emdiv the artistic excellence of that
language. Teaching and learning of a foreign language
through its literature, where the students feel the man-
woman relationship on the beauty of space and time,
would allow authentic exposure to that foreign
language.

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Representation of Diverse Voices in English Literature

In the context of how English literature has represented
the spectrum of culturally diverse voices (both those
who have been silenced and those whose cries were
heard) as an agent of change, it is worth exploring the
left voices through the lens of racism. The concept of

“race” represents distinct socio

-political categories, a

process of social stratification by which people are
differentially classified, treated, and the meanings
attributed to them. The meaning of race is ultimately
contingent upon political incorrectness, characterizing

those perceived to be “different” from one’s self in

some way (M. Withers, 2019). Language manipulation,
stereotyping, and censorship were inspirations for
some poets. Upon their naiveté, multitudinous groups

of people’s voices keep crying bitterly for social

fairness, liberty and self-expression. Their screams are

hidden in conflating literary codes like “alienation,”
“internal exile,” “marginalization” and “non

-

space.”

For writers from issues-implicated ethnic cultural
identities, literature is to be considered an active

socially engaged performance of identity’s construing

(identities of language, gender, and class) in writing,
that is, the contestation pursuit of discursive power to
define selfhood (the outer), humanity (the inner),
contestability (the stance), and re-construct Indianess
(the essence) against the restraints laid on by the
languages and in the languages. Race relations
represent the fundamental sociopolitical binary of
American life. Related to cultural politics and the
politics of memory, memory is essential for the feeling
of unhomeliness characteristic of multicultural
societies. Memory shapes identity on individual and
collective levels. Ethnic conflicts stem from racialized
identities. These identities arise from historical

disputes about ‘who we are’ and ‘who belongs’ that

were shaped by and shape the discriminatory border

dividing ‘us’ and ‘them’. Embedding racialized identity

struggles in unresolved racial turmoils, this American-
heartbreak narrative is painfully resonant with the
burgeoning multicultural societies. Cultures serve as a
site of struggle for power and rights rather than self-
identification basis. Exploring literatures by national or

racial origin, in particular those ‘silenced’ senses of ‘the
alien’, ‘the other’, ‘the unhomely’, ‘the peripheral’, ‘the
marginal’, ‘the buried’, ‘the blind’, and ‘the muted’, is

conspicuously vivid. On the basis of cultural production
and reproduction, examining the involvement of

ethnically diverse literatures in struggles for identity’s

contestation is academically desirable. Inter-cultural
relevance of heterogeneous produce and consumption
of creative merchandise forms, values, and styles,
reflects in c

ultural politics’ impact on the definition of

cultural identity and its reframing. This serves as a

prospective input into the rapidly-growing ethnic and
cultural studies projected onto English literature.

Women Writers

English literature has inherited an impressive legacy
from women writers whose explorations of the
oppressions inflicted both by patriarchy and
colonisation have yet to meet with adequate critical
attention (Durrans, 2019). The vast collection of Indian
authors who popularised English literature throughout
the last century and currently has yet to be effectively
unpackaged. A brief examination of selected novels by
early female writers will highlight aspects of colonial
oppression which would be developed with
sophistication by post-colonial writers, alongside a
number of continuities that are surprisingly
unchanged. The selected authors of the novels chosen
for examination are female, and not only as a result of
the fact that it will be between them that some
significant continuities can be explored. This project
also acknowledges the material realities of colonial
oppression, and in light of the systematised brutalities
enforced on women, it is drawn towards the
representations of oppressions inflicted through both
patriarchy and colonisation.

The novel by both Kamala Das and Geeta Mehta
interrogates the realities of oppression imposed on the
div. Written in the first person, the corporeal
obsession of the narrators recalls the project of
feminist critical theory, but it also develops an
awareness of a breach with Western feminism which

roots its depictions of identity in the flesh. Das’s poem

was written in Kerala, the southernmost state of India
despite being an only child born into an upper-caste
extended

family. The ‘lunar, ludicrous cuts that show

through her veils and clothes’ criticises the behaviour
of a sexually curious uncle, but the ‘mysterious blood’
and the ‘abandoned womb’ at puberty exposes the

inability of such epithets to encompass the
complexities of mature sexuality (Dowson, 2004). In
the self-destructive pursuit of an identity defined by
the bodily, both narrators affirm, as defined by critics,
an excessive corporeality. Nevertheless, such
oppression is always recognised as a transaction.

Within the world of the oppressive male gaze, sexuality

exists as a commodity exchanged for power. In Das’s

broken, child-

like English, the old man’s house

becomes a ‘dead div’, while Mehta’s descriptions of

the gutsy dabbawallahs are reminiscent of its emphasis
on the lowly. With observant witness, the characters
address their subjects by the terms that reveal their
significances in the economies of oppression. The

patterns of craving return in Geeta Mehta’s ‘A River
Sutra’, including a self

-destructive search for a

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disguised, hyper-real version of the lost div. Its
littered, cheap puns are inventive descriptions of the
nature of desire. In their corporeality, these puns
endow a transient hope of laughter and invite it for a

brief moment, but Mehta’s men a

lso observe

indifferently the objectifying mechanisms they have
figured.

LGBTQ+ Authors

Despite

the

many

advancements

in

LGBT+

representation in literary circles, there is still a long
path to navigate. (A. Toman, 2014). Representation in
media is crucial for youth understanding and
developing their own identity. Without seeing
someone like them, it is easy for youth to feel isolated.
It is important that queer youth know they are not
alone, and it is equally important for heteronormative
youth to see and understand those who are different
from themselves; that they are not monsters, or
something to be feared. Many of these 10
aforementioned

books

are

written

with

heteronormative themes; therefore it is difficult, if not
impossible, for a queer youth to see themselves (or
have an understanding of themselves) within the text.
Most of these books also feature heteronormative
covers that objectify the lesbian relationship within,
making it the focus of the reader's attention right away,
rather than having them explore a text that is
representative of their interests or issues.

Moreover, recent children’s books emphasizing and

celebrating heterosexual relationships can be harmful
in their own right. Recent studies show strong

correlations between adolescent boys’

reading

preferences and homophobia. Heteronormative texts
geared towards males that uphold traditional
masculinity ideals bombard these boys in classic

literature,

rereleased

children’s

books

and

contemporary young adult novels. Not only do these
portrayals contribute to heteronormative childhood
development, they also discourage empathy for same
sex romances or alternative sexualities. Bringing

children’s resources to the forefront of the literary

canon can curtail the cycle. Making positive,
celebratory texts available to youth, unharmed by the
weight of heteronormative issues can teach
acceptance and equality. Moreover, in order to avoid

‘queer baiting,’ it should be assured that these
resources do not ‘downplay’ LGBTI+ presence in

adaptations of texts, or restrict ways of thinking or
expression. It must also be taught that being friendly to

others’ differences does not mean denouncing their
own difference from a ‘norm,’ but co

-existing with

these opposing identities.

The Impact of Globalization on English Literature

Globalization is a process that links economic and
cultural transformations of societies across the world
and

creates

worldwide

dependency.

Cultural

dimensions of globalization change the nature of
cultural production, transmission, mediation, and
impact. The availability of an increasing number and
variety of English texts together with the challenge
posed by competently belonging to a world where
English is virtually becoming the lingua franca, push
ahead the idea of world literature. This change
becomes glaringly evident when global and local
aspects come into focus. As a decidedly global text,
English literary works speak to readers of diverse
relevant engagements across national borders,
imaginations, and settings in a rule-making process in
the context of English-speaking cultures since their
inception. But the way they embed in local cultural
contexts varies considerably across different societies.

With regards to Indian context, it is delineated how the
colonial legacy of English literature narrowed down and
circumscribed the scope of pedagogy. It had cultural
dimensions. Within the classical-modern divide, the
overwhelming focus on the former that is, transcending
time and space, ended up delving into pre-colonial
memories of civilizations with no social relevance to
the times and space Indians lived in. The critical survey
of the impact of global cultural forces exploiting the
democratic possibilities implanted with leftist ideas
culminates into indigenous lives of the people. It charts
in depth the disruptive impacts of the satellite
television boom in the 1980s which led to the
unprecedented multiplication of channels and cultures
that resulted in nihilism and a perception of
deterritorialization.

As far as this detailed account of fabricating and
proliferating superficial and transitory identities goes,
the chain of events parallels with the socio-cultural
changes materializing across the world. In an
articulation that seems to reflect the contemporary
ethos, it is poignantly pointed out that the nine years
of liberalization were reckoned with not only the
attempts of regimes to assimilate forms of fashionable
global discourses but also a conceptual inversion,
claiming a failed enterprise unlearning Indian social and
cultural history.

Literary Criticism and Cultural Studies

The historic role of English literature in articulating a
defence of economy, empire and state has

repercussive consequences. The discipline’s legacy –

its

‘hidden politics and ethics’ –

is interpreted as no less a

‘cultural monument’ than literary texts themselves,
crucial to grasping ‘what critiquing, and teaching,
literary culture is up against’. Previously for Marxist

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theorists in the late-twentieth century, and presently
from strands in contemporary cultural studies, such
positions have provoked intense debate.

Literary criticism has likewise been re-construed as an
agent of government and a pedagogically-enhanced

structure of feeling, mirroring Dominic Head’s call for ‘a

new historicizing of criticism in relation to late-

modernity’. If a defensive

-policitical milieu can

condition a discourse of literature, the same could be

said of its opposite; as Hartley posits, ‘what texts do in
culture is far more important than what they mean’,

with the most deeply inscribed sediments resonating
over the most harried currents.

Thus are brought to bear fundamental distinctions
regarding culture. Piece-meal vomitings of massic
shapes or continuous liquefactions metamorphosing
agentic churns? In the midst of jewelled froth or slipper
in the mud? These are evidently not mere aesthetic-
waste tropes, however big and belligerent. They too
dramatise grand theories of cultural power and of
literary agency. Certainly, such offered ideas of the
novel, or of literary culture more generally, could
advance on any evaluative scale. But that does not
mean instances like the Gifford readings can be
discounted, belittled or serenely circumnavigated.
Nonetheless, such paradigms need not preempt more
focused interrogations of the very structure of literary
professions, such as how different types of
discrimination might operate toward different formal
entities across different locations, or how literary
understanding is institutionalised in particular
curricular or assessment regimes.

A revived interdisciplinary critique of literary and
cultural studies in relation to contemporary social
theorising takes many forms. Not in and of themselves
panaceas, these may nonetheless encourage forms of
critical questioning and theorising which can catalyse
equally new forms of literary and cultural studies

practice in schools. Recognising the ‘surfaces’ of

cultural power and learning differently, they can
provide theorist-practitioners in schools with means to
window, deflect, fracture and/or refashion those
surfaces and the conditions constitutive of their odd
mutuality (Gordon, 2018).

The Role of Education in Promoting Literary
Awareness

English language literature is a powerful vehicle to build
cross-cultural awareness. The ability to view social,
cultural, political and economic phenomena in a
foreign tongue within an imaginary construct provided
a view of life that embodied challenges to the
established way of thinking, exposes paternalism,
elitism or unthinking acceptance of status quos such as

cast distinctions, religious fundamentalism or class
divisions. Exotic new fictions function as native
narratives. They foreground sadness, anger joy of the
oppressed or anarchist elation of the dispossessed, the
childish naïveté of naïve acceptance of general
unfairness or a rant of possibly incoherent madness, an
indulgent tirade against authorities too oppressive to
condone or laugh at, a shield against the perilous truth
of a conquering xenophobia. African literature written
in English enshrouds in its narratives the façade of
rootlessness, poverty, rage, guilt and an other that has
in recent decades consistently transformed black

subjects into ‘not members of the community of
decent, civilized people not protected by the law’ . Axis

of evil annihilation was agrarian complexity. Jeestáté-
fauny of repression full cooperation. The global
realization of war on terror condemned an entire
African continent, an entire nation, its native
narratives, to obscurity, politics of forgotten identity
and voice.

Education enables children to frame questions and
identify their own needs; thus, it deepens community
ties. Children develop attitudes toward community
involvement, political participation and social activism.
It empowers youth, nurtures relations between
teacher and students and builds relations among
students co-developing and strengthening common
identities. It teaches social investigation and action,
provides understandings of power relations, injustice,
and the skills to transform real places and times. To
encourage youth to examine their own identities and
their relations to existing power structures across race,
class, gender and other forms of identity is part and
parcel of democratic citizenship education (Dyer,
2007). To initiate and establish the relevance of why
they should learn literature, instructors need to
promulgate a curriculum whose relevance rests in the
short-term, local, concrete concerns of input groups
lost globally, abstractly, temporally. Both written
literature and other mode texts such as visual, oral and
performing art talk to their audiences. Cognitively and
affectively, they process how the world works its
beauty and absurd spectacles, its normative and
deviant

practices,

its

experimentations

and

achievements. Thus literarians’ focus, experties,

contexts, stances and methodologies vary wide across
local and foreign geography, textuality, temporality
and modality. Expertise rests respectively in linguistics,
anthropology, semiotics, sociology, aesthetics, content
analysis and discourse.

Digital Literature and Cultural Identity

The earlier ambivalence that many Italian writers
expressed toward the digital world appears to be
evaporating in favor of a reconciliation with writing for

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the Internet, thanks in part to the capacity to confer
identity on Italy and the Italian language in the face of
fragmented pronunciation and diverse dialects.
Concerns about the abandonment of Italian literature,
accompanied by fear and resistance to digital
technology, have become less explicitly evident. The
phenomenon of hypertext literature and the
development of the digital novel have gained
importance in current debates and critical discussions.
These discussions seem to offer a different perspective:
that of the genre of narration. The outlook now
appears more congenial to the view of literature.

This difference is largely the result of the broadening of
literature and its reception in the age of cheap digital
reproduction and the proliferation of new devices for
reading. Artifacts that, having previously been new,

were kept at arm’s length, are n

ow claimed by the

discipline. Does this mean that there are no longer any
critical problems? It is clear that, although they are
welcomed into the vast space of Italian literature, new
technologies need to accommodate a blitzkrieg,
confront a different usage of the word, and reckon with
societal complexity. The question is not just how to give
them dignity within the textual category of digital
literary artifacts and put them into anthologies, but
also whether it is appropriate to pass onto students, as
literary texts of today, the digital artifacts of a breakfast
taken in the contemporary era without first presenting
the entire prologue on the media treatment of the
contemporary literary scene.

Some Italian authors have begun to write of literature
in an increased amount for dissemination on the net.
Authors who focus intently on the Internet, on the
digital medium of creative writing, and on the ways this
new practice changes and engages with the old
medium, are of great concern. These studies are
important theoretical contributions that would be
helpful for contextualization. However, they have little
input for working on digital literary texts, as they do not
translate well into pedagogical contexts. They develop
mostly on poetry and on works whose textuality is not
very close to high school students.

Challenges Faced by Multicultural Authors

Multicultural literature refers to any literature that
features characters, settings, themes, or intentions
that are culturally diverse. The experience of reading
multicultural literature should be similar to witnessing

a visual representation of one’s cultural environment.

Otherwise, published texts would only reinforce the

‘us’ vs. ‘them’ paradigm perpetuated by existing

cultures, leaving multicultural authors to deal with the
vagaries of an audience whose expectations constantly
shifted. The lesson an author learns should become a

reflection of the understanding a reader achieves when
they ask full-fledged meaning-making questions about
unfamiliar texts. Thus, multicultural authors are faced

with the challenge of “translating” and “transcripting”

their culture into textual languages apprehendable to
publishers, critics, and readers who belong to different
cultural contexts than themselves. In a globalized
sociocultural environment, these contexts are no
longer distinguishably homogenous. Growing up,
reading, and living in an intercultural community has
led to the perception of being positioned somewhere

between “the native” locations of the home culture
and “the foreign” environments of the foreign culture,

so dubbed the third-space, hybrid, or migrant
identities.

English educators must recognize the complications
that multicultural authorship poses in imagining
multicultural literary work. In the process of examining
these complexities, it is imperative to realize the
inevitable impact of cultural negotiation, compromise,
and hybridization involved. The idea of basic writer

designated a writer’s lack of formal schooling in English

and mastery of American rhetoric. Scholars were fond
of elaborating on how incomplete proficiency in English
resulted in inevitable inefficiency in acquiring genre-
appropriate conventions or rhetorical constructions.
Meanwhile, it is generally acknowledged that
immigration impresses frictions, deaths, and crises on
ethnic families, and writers find themselves possessing
an alien national, cultural, linguistic, and sociocultural
identity whilst becoming detached from the

homeland’s culture, language, and sociocultural

environment.

Critics on cultural translation in literary production
among multicultural writers tend to ignore how a text
can be multilayered, where a reading-biased approach
would afford close adherence to it but restrict
opportunities for crosstextualizability and open-ended
interpretations. Comprehensive explorations on the
challenges faced by multicultural writers have hardly
been fully folded into the studies of multicultural
writing.

The Future of English Literature in Multicultural
Contexts

Scholars have questioned the sustainability of English
as a discrete domain of education, "citing the curricular
disintegration of language and literature, the rise of
multi-modal forms of literacy, and the external
pressures of assessment driven by national testing"
(Colarusso, 2010). Others wonder if English will atomize
into its strands, with language newly divorced from
literature. Such tendencies appear to be a threat to the
future of English. Yet these concerns can also be

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construed in a broader context as an appeal for
transdisciplinary approaches to curriculum innovation
and for more empowering conceptions of English, as
posited by some scholars. The centrality of English gives
it great communicative power; it is indeed the language
most widely learnt and used by those whose native
language is not English. Proposing several approaches
to the concept of comparative media education,

today’s conception spans written, visual, aural, multi

-

modal forms in all arts media, and their patterning
across and among channels and modes (Cimarosti,
2015)

. What is distinctive today nonetheless is English’s

unique access to evolving multiple perspectives by way
of new texts formed in response to it, and propelling
new

forms

of

global

interconnection.

Reconceptualizing English culture is seen as a rich,
multi-voiced,

excitable,

polymorphous

entity

constituting more than a series of independent ‘texts’
or ‘traditions’ anywhere in the physical or virtual word,

and most assuredly capitalizing on minor positions
within

these

assemblages.

Reconceptualizing

contestation within English culture is indistinguishable
from reconceptualizing English culture itself because
significance resides in both constructive and
destructive dynamics. This effort to reconceptualize

the ‘future of English’ forms a global network of

sch

olars committed to the notion that ‘English’ is a

shabby, rough, and porous vehicle of ever-evolving
form and significance that can take several shapes; as
language, culture, instruction, curriculum, subject, and
discipline. As such, English is susceptible to
contestation by all persons confronting it, even
unknowingly. In parallel, contestation continues to be
viewed as a legitimate practice and means of
constituent power that engenders subjectification,
recognition, and voice. After all, it is at points of
struggle over meaning that what is being contested and

its refraction through the ‘future of English’ comes into

view.

Case Study: The Influence of English Literature in India

The introduction of English Literature took place within
a socio-historical context that produced not only the
colonizer and colonized spectres but also a stage of
postcoloniality. Examining the encounter of cultures
through multiple case studies, the shifting dynamics of
power and the production of norms can be deciphered.
However, it is important to note that even though
individual case studies show the complexities of the
encounter, each narrative still remains trapped within
the representation of the state. While the overall
theoretical tendency of modernization is similar in its
various subjects, the local interpretation is complex.
Despite its reality in effect, the focus on genesis
neglects to venture into the ontologically different

realities and field logistics of the other side. Using
England as a starting point in the exploration of the
uncanny dimension, which refers to the return of the
repressed in a dreadful and haunting manner, can
provide comfort and ease (Grant, 2008). Just as English
culture was used as a tool for the construction of
modernity in the non-West, making fairy tales, police,
sport, university, and English literature as part of that
process, the British, in this case within the bent double
of an English poet, had to encounter the

‘other’ side.

The Indian response to the discrepancy continues the
tradition of utilizing appropriated texts for a myriad of
and contradictory purposes. While a sense of Indian
national identity came into place during the colonial
encounter via appropriated Shakespearean culture, the
process also addressed the fissures and frustrations
within the ever-elusive concept with the thematic and
aesthetic experimentation on the returned texts (Pillai,
2015). It is hoped that this uncanny return of the
imperial willakephathe or shakespearean resuscitation
of old ghost images may shed light upon the
mechanisms of global imperialism anew, while also
making it vivid and lively for both those inside it, who
are more than eager to join, and those outside it, who
are torn between fascination and horror.

Case Study: The Influence of English Literature in
South Africa

To understand the place of South Africa, especially in

terms of what it means to be “South African,” one has

to grapple with the frontiers of experience that butt up
against each other: place, culture, language, and
identity. The landscapes and experiences that inform
South African English literature are diverse and various,
as is the canvas upon which that diversity is painted. In
this paper, two post-apartheid novels

—

Conference of

the Birds and To the Land of the Living

—

are considered

with specific reference to how different places and
cultures present hurdles to identity. The novels point to
an expanse of South Africa that is beyond the urban
landscape of the South African capital, especially once
both novels take the characters out of their
geographical comfort zones. Beyond the cultural
complexity of belonging in the city lies the cultural
threshold that traverses into the rural village
hinterlands. Literary tourism and homecoming in

Conference of the Birds imply that “home” or identity

is a hybrid that is borne of the constant and dynamic

negotiation of one’s normative sense of belonging.

Place is ultimately made a negotiation point of identity
that is always relative, incapable of being a fixity sealed
at birth. In To the Land of the Living, the transformation
of identity is reflective of the emergence of the South
African rainbow nation, beset by the vagaries of ethnic
violence and an influx of immigrants that comes with

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globalisation in the face of the real material disparity
between nations (Rafapa, 2014). Belonging is narrated
as a cultural base from which to critique the inmigrant
Other.

The parallels and divergences of these novels’

representations of place and belonging speak to the
dialogues that might be happening in South African
English literature. The migration of cultural
representations across these outlets parallels the
movement of social representations beyond their
cultural sites of production, highlighting the dynamic
ways in which culture possesses the capacity to
transcend boundaries. Cultural production may thus be
situationally immersed in domestic paradigms, but it is
also a part of a global discursive field well beyond
nation. This dynamic world thus calls into question the
singularity that characterises much nationalist projects,
which imagine culture as more homogeneous to the
exclusion of the dynamic world beyond its boundaries,
both cultural and political, which informs and is
informed by it (van Niekerk, 2013).

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Literature and
Identity

The question of mutual relations between world
literatures is insufficient in modern comparative
literature. When studying one literature, the other has
to be taken into consideration too. Today literatures
cannot be studied ignoring the questions of history; nor
can they evade matters of their national being. History
gives answers to the question of contemporary
situation of a literature, including the sources and
classical works, the being of a literature in its nation
and outside the country, the existence in exile, the fate
of a literature under colonial or totalitarian regimes,
and other related questions (Skulj, 2000). The study of
cultural identity gives answers connected to the
historical being which defines the situation of a
literature, and thus it could be studied through letters
and texts, writers and readers, literary historiography,
and cultural politics. However, the problem of cultural
identity, both in the global environment and in relation
to other literatures and worlds, is a long-term or
permanent problem of cultural theory that is far from
being solved. In complicating discourses, cultural
identity, itself composed of a whole range of different
stereotypes, images, and positions, is not univocal and
is a meeting point of several different, even cross-
cultural, influences. The expression of cultural identity

posed the question ’What is our own cultural identity?’

Secondly, a question arose concerning the reception of
representation in regard to its own cultural identity.

What did ’Others’ say about Slovene culture? Were

these representations essential, vulgar, or just curious?
The images of cultural identity in the sense of self-

representations, were important, not only because
they testify and represent the cultural identity itself,
but also because they offer a cultural context which
gives meaning to any formation of cultural identity.
This identity, which is forever ambiguous, complex,
shifting, incomplete, and non-essential, is a palimpsest
or a collage consisting of intertwining identities. One of
the significant factors is the degree to which cultures
are able to participate in the globalized process of
hybridization. This brings to mind the question of either
simple or complex cultural identity, cultural
globalization compared to cultural homogeneity and
the integration into imperial cultures.

Cultural Appropriation vs. Cultural Appreciation

As textile makers and researchers, we value the
indigenous cultural wealth represented in the
extraordinary array of textiles available to us. Textiles
have been an effective vehicle for cultural intersection
and

exchange;

traditions,

materials,

motifs,

techniques, and beliefs are adopted by the meeting of
peoples. An understanding of indigenous textiles can
provide insight into how a culture has interpreted the
surrounding environment and their place in it. The
styles, motifs, and techniques of textiles are being
widely appreciated, and subsequently appropriated,
without acknowledgement or compensation to the
culture from which they derived. An appreciation of
textiles that passes understanding into adoption and
use without attribution and a fair and equitable
bargaining between cultures is inappropriate, hurtful,
and ignorant.

Cultural appropriation is a one-way street; members of
the subordinate culture lose language, food, clothing,
rites, and ultimately identity. What remains is a
caricature, often allowing a fuller entry into the
mainstream culture

—

offering the veneer of native

culture, wholly divorced from the substance, and thus
preserving sharply drawn lines of ethnic identity and
cultural purity. Cultural appropriation insults and
diminishes the culture appropriated. It acknowledges
the life its practitioners have breathed into it, and
treats it as mere words in a language without
comprehension.

Adopted practices are ever sharper reminders of
inequality; their onomatopoeic metaphor becomes

“stolen” as stereotypical representations of the native

culture turn into lamentations of the appropriator on
how terrible it is not to be able to wear such a garment.
This has become endemic in fashion; cultural practices
and material culture representation are stripped of

both understanding and respect, and “native” patterns

and dress constitute costumes on the white div, or

perhaps a “protest.” What remains worth salvaging? To

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appreciate rather than appropriate requires providing

context and examination of a culture’s history and

intent (Ballenger & Hamlin, 2018).

The Role of Literary Festivals in Cultural Identity

Literature is a refuge for artists and a source of
opportunities for thousands of other people. The
complexity and the tensions inherent in artistic
production lend to periods of exceptionally high
innovation and imagination (Jepson et al., 2008). The
global search for purpose and meaning has been
echoed in the work of writers, poets and artists who
reflect, interpret and shape the world that we live in.
Literature attains a special status in this exchange of
cultural identity construction and its use as a discursive
space of representation for literary works by migrant
authors and the tensions of delocalisation and a sense
of leading belonging is paramount.

This discussion is addressed beside the tensions of
speaking for someone else and being retreating in
privacies with potentially catastrophic and terrible
consequences as was the case with the fictional
representations of the London bombings and their
failures. Since then, there have been countless literary
reflections on the events of seven-seven, and their
generative power to articulate and interrogate the
relationships between place, space, cultural identity
and belonging. Tempest's theatre work of the insistent
questioning of the nature of what it is to be British, the
temporal colony and the conflict between security and
liberty in the 'lost' scene of the bombed tube station is
the successor to the refusal of there to be tragedy.
Brought to a halt by the failure of the bomb under the
Aldgate station, it is the writing around it. That texts on
events like the London bombings undertake a distinctly
separate role from those of readers or spectators who
would view or read them at a distance through a single
act of consumption in a single sitting.

In Conclusion, Literature attains a special status in this
exchange of cultural identity construction. Literary
works produced by migrant authors, themselves
negotiating and enacting these tensions of
delocalisation and a sense of leading belonging. On
both sides of the established boundaries of nation-web
and Britian-ness writing literature on art being a refuge
for atists and a source of opportunities for an army of
others is for just the privileged few.

Impact of social media on Literary Discourse

The rapid propagation of online-social media influences
the mindset and behavior of its user communication.
Teenage as well as children require as a minimum
simple parental monitoring of their social media use at
home. The prior public concern about the suitability of
some content in social networking sites is less than that

of children’s internet browsing in general. Public

knowledge of practices regarding the social media use
of children and teenagers is limited. There is little
understanding of the factors influencing the practices

of parents monitoring their children’s social media use

(Juliastuti, 2019). Children's exposure to social media
was not perceived by parents as a situation that
warranted closer supervision than general internet
access. Girls were more likely than boys to experience
parental monitoring of social media.

In considering the key intelligences integral to a
neoliberal society, it is imperative that the nature of the
current transformation in public education, heavily
focused on further developing young peopl

e’s social

effectiveness within the market driven economy be
critically examined (Carlson, 2016). To do this, a
definition of social and cultural milieu is first necessary.
An analysis is then provided of the strategies adopted
by a group of high and marginally influential women in
a rapidly social-media-centric, neoliberal society to
develop their social effectiveness. This, it is contended,
consists of two interdependent processes: creating the
appearance of a positive feminine identity mediated
through engagement in social media text; and
enhancing credibility through presentation of literacy
practices suited to the target audience.

The digitally literate individual, it is argued, emerges
capable of creating an apparently substantial sociality
across homogenous platforms while tactically
manipulating that identity to embrace differentiated
spheres of real world experience, determined by their
virtues, beliefs and needs as situated actors in
particular social contexts. Responses from three key
participants

highlight a new ‘style’ of literacy that has

evolved from recent changes in both the social and
technological domains, enabling them to build cultural
capital within their community while maintaining a
critical distance from that very world the social texts
appeared to endorse. Use of visual communication,
ambiguity, and sign removal are examined and are
illustrated with excerpts informed by a combination of
conventional discourse analytic techniques, (broadly)
social semiotic analysis and descriptive grounded
interpretation.

The Interplay Between Literature and Politics

The interplay of literature and politics in contemporary
society necessarily encompasses the role of the state
and the government in constituting that identity
(Stotsky, 2018). To explore th

e public’s construction of

literatures’ identities, it is necessary to look at the role

of education in its various forms. The way people are
educated about, and through, literature will shape how
they subsequently relate to it, and how that might

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further contribute to different collective notions of
identity. For this reason, issues surrounding literature,
politics, and (collective) identity need to be discussed
separately, and at an abstract level, before confronting
their implications on the operational basis of political
power.

The connection between literature and the formulation
of identities is not new. Many scholars have published
works that deal directly with the question of how
literature contributes to notions of collective identity.
The construction of a literary canon for a community
over a geographical, political, or cultural space, and
how that canon is passed on to subsequent generations
of that same community, is essential to making the
community coherent, therefore borrowing an identity.
However, within the modern state, the function of
education is at least as important as that of literature.
For a community to have a long-lasting identity, a
locality that transcends generations must be provided.
Literature can help meet this condition, but this can
only happen if the younger generations are educated
to comprehend it in the desired way and perceive it as
a crucial source of identity. Importantly though, there
are various forms of education. The kind carried out in
schools is very different from that carried out at home
and among friends. Their greatly differing institutional
frameworks and practices will lead to differing
outcomes concerning the desired relation of the public
to literature.

Case Study: English Literature and Indigenous Cultures

A third case study revolves around the relationship
between English literature and indigenous cultures,
with specific emphasis on Oz literature in the Australian
post-colonizing context and on the use of a non-
standard English variety used by indigenous speakers
and authors. The focus of attention lies with the issues

involving the “standard vs. non

-

standard” divide and

the “naturalistic vs. poetic” divide. These issues will be

elaborated on by means of excerpts taken from the
analysis of a piece of Oz poetry written by the
indigenous poet and author Mudrooroo. Attention has
often been drawn to the significant role played by
literature in cultural identity in particular local contexts
and to the momentous impact that English literature
has had and does have on these issues in non-Western
contexts (Cimarosti, 2015). As the case of Australian
literature in English via an indigenous perspective
shows, the impact of literature in an imperial language
on local cultural and linguistic identity has been
controversial, paradoxical and, at times, destructive. It
has led to the disruption of the local society and of its
linguistic regime, but attention will also be drawn to the
literary

counter-discourse

the

colonized

and

dispossessed people are starting to weave into their

cultural fabric.

The historical context for the analysis is that of the rise
of colonialism in Oz, focusing on the rise of a settler
mentality, while the cultural context is one of
dissatisfaction with canonical Oz literature and of the
search for an alternative literature. A major shift in
paradigm occurs during the late 1950s, triggering a
blossoming of indigenous literature in English itself,
with indigenous writers now being the authors of Oz
culture and its literature. This is echoed in questions
about modes of representation, what is privileged as

‘literature’ and who is allowed to represent culture. A

Exploring the Impact of English Literature on Cultural Identity in Multicultural Societies

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