Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismLosing the RaceRomanticism is losing the race. Have a look around at the next conference you attend. It will be white as Washington. Whiter. Why? Not because students of color have nothing to study. On the contrary, the Romantic period saw the abolition of the slave trade, the consolidation of Empire, the institution of the first black republic in Haiti. But the way we approach these subjects is about as appealing as herringbone tweed. The problem is the "British" in British Romanticism. It's honky white. [1] We need to decentralize our discipline, get off the island and onto the islands, creolize our discourse, hybridize our critical habits. The future is upon us. And the future is black. Notes1. There is hope in books like Alan Richardson's recent edition Early Black British Writing (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004). But if written discourse serves as our threshold of visibility for blackness, we'll miss much, well most, of black life during the Romantic Period. Navigation |