I realize I talk about this constantly but can we talk about dark academia? I just cannot get over how people on here are so enthralled with having a flimsy excuse for racism and classism by way of ‘dark academia’ they just completely ignore metaphors or clear textual evidence of these books being satirical (the biggest example being, of course, The Secret History by Donna Tartt).
Take Maurice by EM Forster— do you know how often I’ve seen people call it ‘dark academia’ as if the portions of it set at college aren’t extremely sparse, and as if the text isn’t very explicitly a commentary on classism. It isn’t a coincidence that Clive espouses the white supremacist and classist ideals so common in this era, and it isn’t a coincidence that Clive leaves Maurice because of these ideas, and it isn’t a coincidence that Alec is the person that Maurice ends up with, and it isn’t a coincidence that Alec is not rich.
And yet! How rarely do I see people obsessed with dark academia talk about anything except Clive and Maurice! How often do I see people talk about the ‘hair stroking scene’ on end as if Clive isn’t written to be irredeemable because of so many of these values he holds, values aligned with so many of the values (satirical) novels in the dark academia ‘canon’ expound on, and values that so many people without a modicum of reading comprehension take to be admirable.
There is a huge amount of racism surrounding dark academia, from the satirized explorations of white upper class society to arguably unconscious racism on part of many authors in this genre, as well as readers. And I’m not just talking about the moodboards, and the edits and what have you, though it is clear what so many of the people creating these edits think about beauty and who belongs in academic spaces— take a search through the dark academia tumblr. How many of these edits have a single person of color in them, how many of these edits are about beauty and terror? How much do you want to bet people consciously see people of color as unfitting for (dark) academia, or are they just unconsciously racist in a space that doesn’t explore and analyze why dark academia is as white as it is, and why we associate whiteness with beauty so easily?
All of this is true and infuriating, don’t get me wrong. But what I want to talk about when I talk about racism (and classism, to an extent) is the unconscious values eagerly thrown around without thought or analysis.
People are desperate to be like the main characters of The Secret History (a satire, may I add! I’ve said this three times but The Secret History is a satire! It is not serious! Why do so few people know that!) without any thought as to these characters’ values. Studying the classics without critique or self-awareness isn’t something to aspire to, nor is being classist and racist and holier-than-thou. To worship dark academia— the classics, ancient Greece and Rome, the canon of white male authors from England and France and the United States— is to adhere to racist morality.
Dark academia is by definition a cautionary tale- why is it that these protagonists or their friends always seem to end up bringing about their own downfall, dying or ending up miserable by the end of the tale? Why is it that not one self-absorbed, ‘eurocentric upper class’ literature obsessed protagonist doesn’t have a happy ending? It certainly isn’t because the narrow and often racist teachings they adhere to taught them well.
And yet we still worship these protagonists. We still obsess over the ideas of the Greeks and Romans, the painfully white and painfully male Western literary canon, without any sort of critical thinking. I’m not here to say you’re a bad person for enjoying the classics, I’m not here to say you can’t enjoy the classics- I enjoy the classics! I am saying that you cannot enjoy these things without thinking critically about why they are so popular, why you immediately gravitate to the idea of wealth and whiteness, and why you take certain aspects of dark academia— the aesthetics, the education, the Ivy League certainty and ego— without thinking about any of the rest of it, such as the cautionary tales weaved into almost every story in this genre.
