Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismHistories of the FutureIt's a huge betrayal of the utopian insurgencies of Romanticism to cycle them back into simple historicism. History was adapted by those wily Germans for the purpose of critique, which is to say the production of new possibilities. [1] The historicism that currently rules the practice of Romantic studies lacks both this critical instinct and its social efficacy. Historicism without contemporary relevance is impotent. [2] Romanticism without utopian futures is dead. Notes1. Philosophers as different as Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Foucault put history to the test of the futures it produces. 2. Consider in this regard many--but by no means all--of the titles in the interminable Cambridge Studies in Romanticism Series. One thinks of Marx here, or something like him: the point is not to interpret the past, the point is to change it. Navigation |