Techno-Prosthetic Romantic Futurism

Posted: No Post-structuralists!

Why are there so few post-structuralist critics of Romanticism? Maybe Ira Livingston, in some moods Tim Morton. [1]   There used to be Paul DeMan, of course, but he looks more and more like a negative theologian now, and not an honest one at that. [2]   Is it the De Man effect that has scared off post-structuralists, the fear that too much theory turns you fascist? Or is it the old British bigotry against abstraction, as much a national character trait as a philosophical conviction? [3]   The retro-crypto-archivo empiricism that today sets the terms for investigation knows everything and changes nothing. Quick, somebody, dial the theory police!


Notes

1. Ira Livingston, Arrow of Chaos: Romanticism and Postmodernity (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997), Timothy Morton, The Poetics of Spice (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000).

2. See Paul DeMan, Blindness and Insight, ed. Wlad Godzich, 2nd ed., rev. (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983).

3. See David Simpson, Romanticism, Nationalism, and the Revolt against Theory (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993).


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