Department of English Publications
Title
Introduction
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2017
Journal
Romantic Circles Praxis Series
Abstract
This collection thinks the “rights” of the negative against the more common association of the term “rights” with human rights and rights that can be posited. Such rights, despite their seeming liberalism, produce a normative notion of the person which is in the end biopolitical, and moreover, in assuming that rights can always be posited, they assume the primacy of the public sphere. The essays in this collection all resist the current emphasis on the public sphere that has resulted from the absorption of “Romanticism” into the “Nineteenth Century,” and focus instead on Romanticism as a retreat from publication, publicity and consensus. Whether this retreat is absolute negation or a withdrawal that holds something in reserve is a question left open in the spaces between these six essays on Godwin, Charlotte Smith, Coleridge and Goya.
Citation of this paper:
“Introduction.”The Rights of the Negative. Ed. Tilottama Rajan, Special issue of Romantic Praxis (2017) https://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/negative