Pre-professionalization English teachers produced bilingual practice without inner split

Evidence

A typical college teacher of English in an earlier generation was an activist of the nationalist or communist parries (sometimes both), or a crusader for civic reform. He was likely to be teaching English mainly to earn a living and to satisfy his love of this foreign literature which he had in some ways made his own, but he was likely either not to write at all or to write about the literature of his own indigenous culture, probably in the language of his family; equally likely, he would teach English in accordance with the English literary canon but write not criticism, not English, but poetry or fiction in his own tongue. This kind ofbilingualitythe felt cultural distance between the language of the taught text and the language of one’s own sense and inwardness, hence one’s own writingwas all the more probable if he did not come from the upper class, and virtually inevitable if he were of the progressive political persuasion. So readily and completely would his own social milieu then reaffirm that cultural distance that he would not feel it, subjectively, as a split within himself. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1217

Categorization

• XREF: Bilingual cultural distance as a stable, non-pathological placement resonates with the reader’s question of whether an ironic/strategic position can be sustained without collapse into essentialism or inner split. — connects to: Local teachers transmitted nationalist tendencies even within English-oriented colonial schooling — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 754; Comparative historical-cultural study can break the colonial grid in English teaching — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 541; Intellectual practice is reproduced through teaching, not only through writing — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 272

Broader Connections

• Local teachers transmitted nationalist tendencies even within English-oriented colonial schooling #corroborates (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 754
• Comparative historical-cultural study can break the colonial grid in English teaching #corroborates (0.72) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 541
• Intellectual practice is reproduced through teaching, not only through writing #expands (0.72) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 272