Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismThe Future is Becoming BlackAlondra Nelson directs our attention to new futures opened up, not just by new technologies, but more importantly the uses specific practitioners make of them. Hence the promise of what she calls "Afro-Futurism," the artistic and critical expression of "African American voices" that have "other stories to tell about culture, technology, and things to come." [1] As these voices combine with the new technologies they speak of, new possibilities emerge--for blackness, for identities, for futurities. Can studies in Romanticism turn Afro-Futurist? Can new technologies help us to confront the mute, imperial, unmarked whiteness of our scholarship? [2] Notes1. Alondra Nelson, "Introduction: Future Texts," Social Text 20.2 (2002): 1-15, 9. 2. See Richard Dyer, White (New York: Routledge, 1997). Navigation |