Techno-Prosthetic Romantic Futurism

After Wordsworth

"Two consciousnesses," said William Wordsworth, and wrote a long, brilliant, personal poem to solve the problem. [1]   Poetry persuaded him of his singular existence. His example continues to persuade us of ours. But what is the value of this Wordsworthian bravura for us? Isn't it a vestige of an earlier world in which humanity had a spirit, subjectivity had a transcendental ego, and England had an Empire? In a world where power is everywhere and surveillance is another name for subjectivity, the egotistical sublime seems quaint. Where is the post-structuralist ready to name this symptom, to deconstruct the worth of words in the fabulation of identity? [2]

Notes

1. William Wordsworth, The Prelude The Prelude: a Parallel Text, ed. J. C. Maxwell (New Haven: Yale UP, 1971).

2. Paul DeMan comes close sometimes, but his investment in certain oppositions (time/space, allegory/metaphor) a general distain for materiality weakens his case. See "The Rhetoric of Temporality," Blindness and Insight, ed. Wlad Godzich, 2nd rev. ed. (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983): 187-228.

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