Beyond the Capitals of Decadence (ACLA 2025)

Beyond the Capitals of Decadence

Since antiquity, the elusive concept of ‘decadence’—regardless whether defined as a socio-cultural phenomenon, an artistic movement, or as an aesthetic programme—has been associated with the city. Especially during the fin de siècle, “decadent writers adopted a range of sensibilities that facilitated their simultaneous participation in, and resistance to, urban modernity” (Michael Shaw). The vast body of academic literature on the topic, such as the insightful work of David Weir and Jane H. Desmarais, Stefano Evangelista, Kristin Mahoney focuses on the urban sensibilities of writers and artists working in and inspired by the capitals of decadence (ancient Rome, Paris, London, Vienna or Berlin). Decadent art originating from outside these cultural centres remains, however, surprisingly understudied.

In recent years there has been a considerable effort to expand our understanding of decadence in different directions. Following Matthew Potolsky, we understand the decadent movement as a distinctly transnational and cosmopolitan “republic of letters” that cannot and should not be seen as limited to a few Central European metropoles. For this seminar, we therefore invite papers that help to expand and redraw the canonical map of decadent literature and art, both in geographical as well as in cultural terms. We are equally looking for contribution that put the neglected “provincial” flâneurs and “small town” dandies of allegedly peripheral cultural centres such as Marseille, Dublin, Weimar, Lisbon, Oslo, Belgrade or Tbilisi as well as the urban decadents engaging with non-European cities such as Shanghai, Buenos Aires, Beirut or Tokyo. We are also keen to see proposals that expand ideas of decadence beyond the fin de siècle, reaching back into antiquity, and forward to today.

We welcome proposals addressing a broad range of topics addressing decadence as a phenomenon reaching beyond its Central-European metropolitan origins. Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

-          transnational and transcultural trajectories of decadent aesthetics and ethics

-          city and culture specific representations of key concepts such as decay, artificial beauty, excess, eccentricity etc.

-          city and culture specific manifestations and representations of the dandy and the flâneur

-          the legacy of fin de siècle decadence in transnational, transcultural and transhistorical contexts

-          the subversive potentials of decadent aesthetics and politics

-          non-European spiritualities and decadent poetics

-          the social, cultural and artistic dialectic of ‘the center’ and ‘the margins’ in decadent contexts

Please note that all paper proposals must be submitted via the ACLA paper submission portal: https://www.acla.org/node/add/paper

For further inquiries please contact: Florian Zappe (contact@florianzappe.xyz) and James Dowthwaite (james.dowthwaite.eng@gmail.com).