The irony of the Canon Wars is that those who dismantled the teaching of the old cultural canon in the name of anti-imperialism thereby aided the rise of a new one, dominated by a few IP assets, that is perhaps the most powerful vehicle of cultural imperialism the world has seen.

It would seem that a culture will gravitate towards a narrative canon, regardless of what intellectuals and academics say; but in a hyper-capitalist culture that canon will be provided by the market, especially if there are no autonomous institutions offering an alternative.

But such a canon will be a sort of anti-canon, which rather than providing some degree of cultural stability and continuity, will pander to the preferences of the moment and to the volatile, shifting moods of the media-saturated public.