Techno-Prosthetic Romantic Futurism

The Politics of Dreaming

The Victorians were right. "Romanticism" is an oppositional discourse. The brilliance of their particular description is to diffuse it in advance. Romanticism: that dreamy, otherworldly idealism. Romanticism: those quaint old stories, those simulated antiques. Nothing to worry about here! More recent descriptions repeat this dismissal. Romantic Ideology: a ruse, a false consciousness. [1]   Romantic writing: whatever scholars decide counts. [2]   Let's put the danger back in Romanticism. What would happen if we approached it as a political discourse? We should exploit the opportunity that its dismissal presents.


Notes

1. Jerome McGann, of course. The Romantic Ideology (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983)..

2. See the impressive Romanticism: An Oxford Guide, ed. Nicholas Roe (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005).


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