Gentle notice that “highbrow” and “lowbrow” are eugenics/race science terms and it may be better to just quietly retire them in casual discussions of art
Prev tags yes absolutely stop saying “degenerate”!
Just a point of historical clarification though, degeneration theory is much older than nazism: it originated in Enlightenment philosophical theories about society and nature, with some significant points of crystallization in the late 18th century by Immanuel Kant, mid-19th century by Benedict Morel, and by Max Nordau in 1892.
The Nazis were a PRODUCT of the prestige philosophy that believed in racial degeneration, the ideas that led to genocide were current throughout Europe and the Americas and were used to justify colonial genocides throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
I think it’s important to understand how deeply rooted this is in European philosophy and social theory because it helps counter the idea that Nazism was some kind of unique aberration. If we recognize the patterns that gave rise to it we have a better chance of responding effectively to those patterns
Social degeneration - Wikipedia
Reading resources to start with!
Discourse on Colonialism by Aime Cesaire
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney
Haunted by Empire edited by Ann Laura Stoler
Imperial Leather by Anne McClintock
How Did Indians Become Straight? by Mark Rifkin
Thank you, great list!!!
