Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismPoMo MinstrelI gave a talk once, and I delivered it in my declamatory way. Foolishly perhaps, I spoke about race. I claimed for Hip Hop a greater usefulness for approaching Olaudah Equiano and even Romanticism than contemporary critical and theoretical discourses. And I am white. Inevitably, it was suggested that I was appropriating (à la Eminem?) a whole array of practices that are black: oratory, mixology, scratch. I was performing blackness. [1] I don't want to duck this accusation. It rings with a terrible, complicated truth. But unless we risk minstrelsy, I fear, studies in Romanticism will remain terminally white. You dig? Notes1. The struggle against white hegemony in the academy must be waged on all sides. I doubt identity politics is our best weapon, but it offers something to start throwing. Navigation |