History Bump

Ohman emplots the story of the English department in a descending narrative that mirrors his version of the Marxist story of late capitalism. The story of the English department appears to have a synecdoche relationship to the larger capitalist system—if I’m getting this right. Rampant corporatization is ruining the English department just as it is ruining the world in general. However, the descent can still be turned upwards if English teachers would teach according to humanist principles: “We in the universities, and especially humanists, must mobilize what we know and believe to encourage the humane application of knowledge in the solution of problems created as by-products of previous advances in knowledge” (308). Those “by-products” include war, nuclear weapons, the degraded environment, etc. In this romance, the English teacher is cast in a potentially heroic role in which her/his choices have cataclysmic implications. S/he can choose to remain complicit in the descending narrative of the larger capitalist system by, for example, choosing to support the MLA’s decision in 1968 to distance itself from anti-war activities in the lobby of the convention hotel (28). On the other hand, s/he can choose a transformative role and “encourage the humane application of knowledge.”

It seems to me that the ironic mode comes strongly into play in Ohman’s “Introduction to the 1995 edition.” He refers to his former self ironically as “I or somebody else by the same name” (xiii). He reaffirms, but plays with the solution he proposed in 1976 for a “socialist revolution” (276) as the only remedy for the ills of the English department. He discloses the superficiality of his knowledge of Marx at the time, reveals his political position, gender and professional position, and in this way, he acknowledges the contingent nature of knowledge in a way that I think White would approve of (In White's terms, he "sanctions the ambiguous" 73).