ABSTRACT
To understand the routinization of race across the romantic era, one need to read Romanticism through the lens of critical race theory, a theory whose history and articulation are made possible by the intrinsic incoherence within the racial economy. Although Romanticist scholars of slavery and colonialism have sometimes borrowed from critical race theory, they have done so understandably by accommodating such theory through the dominant methodologies and forms already familiar in romantic studies. Another principle of critical race theory concerns the ways in which race has a complex interrelation to three historical phenomena which both anchor its logic and get motivated by its operation: nationalism, colonialism, and modernization. As Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein note, "the discourses of race and nation are never far apart, if only in the form of disavowal". A similar concept can be advanced concerning the relation between colonialism and race.
