Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismInjury is MeThere's a danger with relying on race as a discourse of redress: it positions you in advance as injured and in need of restitution. This is not to say that people--African people--weren't injured horribly by the British. But should injury for that reason be the condition of identity? [1] Such is the imperial ruse of Wordsworthian (read liberal) sympathy. Toussaint languishes in jail so that Wordsworth can write a poem about him: "Yet die not; do thou / Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow." [2] Thanks man. I bet your poem will set me free. Or maybe your pity. Or maybe your sweet white condescension . . . Notes1. This is, of course, Wendy Brown's argument. See States of Injury (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995). 2. William Wordsworth, "To Touissant L'Overture," Selected Poems and Prefaces by William Wordsworth, ed. Jack Stillinger (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 174. Navigation |