Composition: History & Theory: 1970 - 1979
Ohmann, Richard. English in America: A Radical View of the Profession (1976)
Description
Richard Ohmann’s text, English in America: A Radical View of the Profession, was first published in 1976 (and was published again in 1996 with a new introduction). [Because the new introduction provides important insights from Ohmann on the 1976 edition of his work, we have decided to include Ohmann’s critique of his original work in this section.]
Ohmann states his purpose in the introduction to the 1996 edition as a re-evaluation of his writing in 1976, and an extension of his critique and analysis of English since 1976 (to 1995). Ultimately, whatever failings are present in his 1976 edition, Ohmann believes that the field of English still needs to “historicize the politics of education.” Ohmann relies on his ethos in the introduction, by so critically examining his previous position. He does this, however, in order to strengthen his current analysis of English. Since he admits so honestly his failings, the positions he stands by seem all the more valid and his take on the current state of English seems to come from a more balanced viewpoint.
Ohmann sees the tone of his work in 1976 as perhaps too angry, but this reflects the feeling of the times, when social movements were seeking change on all fronts. “The feeling was of having believed a really big lie,” he writes, “[t]hat explains the repeated trope of unmasking"(xvi). Ohmann’s Marxist theorizing was weak in 1976: “I foresaw a deepening crisis as a result of capitalist economics . . . but I did not much entertain the possibility that the capitalist project of development might be in a crisis on its own terms” (xix). If he were to adjust the book, he would ground it in a Marxist understanding (xxvii). Ohmann admits that his view in 1976 of “the establishment” as monolithic was simplistic. However, Ohmann stands by his original critique that “literature has no intrinsic function apart from the forms and forces that secure its historic existence or, in language not available to me at the time, that socially construct it” (xxiii-xxiv). On hegemony he writes: “When the hegemonic process is working smoothly, not just its main beneficiaries but also its victims see their life chances and trajectories as resulting from differences in individual ability, effort, choice, and luck” (xxviii). In the 1996 preface, Ohmann still seeks to expose the hegemony in English education.
English in America: A Radical View of the Profession (criticism)
“Richard Ohmann was one of those numerous American academics who was, as they say, ‘radicalized’ by the Vietnam War and the other upheavals and events that went along with it in America…He has lost faith in bourgeois culture (the only one around to be sure) and its values, and has almost nothing left to transmit…English in America is very much a period piece, a view of parts of the world from a perspective that was fairly widespread in American university culture a few years ago but seems oddly deficient and inapplicable—perhaps even irrelevant—today…The problems it addresses have been overtaken by history.” (Clark 116).
It seems as though this book was not well-received at the time of its first publication—at least not well-received in certain powerful circles. Opinion seems to have changed since then. It seems Clark was right when he said “English is so weak that it cannot accept criticism” (120). English in America seems to resemble Joel Spring’s The American School in its tone and in the general attitude it takes toward the profession of teaching. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that Spring resembles Ohmann. In the introduction to the 1996 edition, Ohmann reads through the original text again. He admits to begin struck by the “anger of its tone.”
Date of Upload
3/14/09