Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismImperial WhitenessIf we're painfully historicist, we could conclude that race as a bio-cultural category has its roots--or its rivets--in the metafictional project of Empire. [1] If the nation emerges as a social category in the context of global ambition, race emerges similarly as a means to administrate imperial rule. [2] Africans, for instance, change from property into people, but a different kind of people--always already injured, always in need of redress. [3] White becomes another word for normal. Notes1. See Clement Hawes, The British Eighteenth Century and Global Critique (New York: Palgrave, 2005). 2. Perhaps empire even more than state structures racist hegemony. See David Theo Goldgerg, The Racial State (London: Blackwell, 2002). 2. See Paul Gilroy, Postcolonial Melancholy (New York: Columbia, 2004). Navigation |