Decadence and War: Crisis, Chaos, and Culture Wars
Goldsmiths, University of London
RHB 137, 27 June 2025
We are delighted to announce the rescheduling of our symposium, ‘Decadence and War: Crisis, Chaos, and Culture Wars’.
Decadence prowls in the shadows of war, and exposes its contradictions. As a byword for decline, decadence is that which war is supposed to overcome. The destructive force of war empowers those who wage it, and is often seen as a corrective, in the eyes of protagonists, to the weakened moral backbone of a beleaguered nation. Decadence and adjacent concepts are routinely deployed in rhetoric intended to stoke the flames of less bloody but nonetheless aggressive ‘culture wars’ – be it in the condemnation of artists like Ron Athey on the floor of the US Senate (‘Congressional Record’, 1994), or in the grandstanding of politicians like Oliver Dowden, who, in February 2022 while serving as Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party in Britain, vilified the propagation of so-called ‘woke ideology’ as ‘a dangerous form of decadence’.
Chaos, conflict, and political antagonism on the global stage are perennial issues, but in recent months, in the wake of geopolitical crises, bloodshed at borders, and the unhappy renaissance of culture wars ahead of election campaigns, such turmoil appears to have reached fever pitch. What, then, might decadence have to offer to our understanding of the interplay between different kinds of conflict? How do armed conflicts play into the rhetoric of those looking to manufacture a culture war for political gain, and how might the waging of culture wars inform attempts to justify armed conflicts?
Detail from Maxwell Armfield’s pictorial commentary to Vernon Lee, The Ballet of the Nations (1915)
Schedule
09.00 – 09.30: Registration & coffee & pastries
09.30 – 11.15: Panel 1: Conflicted Nations
Sally Blackburn-Daniels, ‘Vernon Lee’s Pacifist Aesthetics and the Art of War’
Aliju Kim, ‘The Darkness That Continues: “The Uncharted Map” and the Decadent Ruins of the Korean War’
Margaret Stetz, ‘Late-Victorian and Neo-Victorian Women Writers on War: From E. Nesbit to Sandi Toksvig’
11.15 – 11.30: Break
11.30 – 13.00: Panel 2: Chaos and the Culture Wars
Sondeep Kandola, ‘A Decadent Intervention? The Ballad of Reading Gaol in the (Victorian) Culture Wars’
Joseph Dunne-Howrie, ‘Staging the War on Woke at the Battle of Ideas’
Philippa Burt, ‘“I’d like to shoot the brutes who worked against me in the way Hitler shot German conspirators”: Edward Gordon Craig’s Violent War Against the British Theatre’
13.00 – 14.00: Lunch
14.00 – 14.20: Interlude: Elena Borelli, Giovanni Pascoli’s Gog and Magog (1904)
14.20 – 14.30: Break
14.30 – 16.30: Panel 3: Conflicted Masculinities / Conflicted Modernities
Anna Shane, ‘An Aesthete Goes to War: decadent masculinities in E. W. Hornung’s Raffles stories’
Rita Dirks, ‘Pacifist Dandies Who Love Guns in Dear Wendy’
Mathew Rickard, ‘‘‘Avec son charme de grande fleur vénérienne”: Incel Masculinities in Joris-Karl Huysmans’s À rebours(1884) and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)’
Sebastian A. Kukavica, ‘Modernity’s Occult War and Decadent Palingenesis: Crusade Against Modernity in Léon Bloy’s The Desperate Man’
17.00: Pub
This is a free event and all are welcome to attend. However, due to catering and limited numbers, registration is required.
Tickets are available HERE.
RHB 137 is on the ground floor and fully accessible.
All food and drink will be vegetarian and vegan.
Please send us an email if you have any other requests regarding accessibility, dietary requirements or anything else that you would like us to be aware of.
Location
Goldsmiths is located in New Cross, South East London.
It is a short walk from both New Cross Gate and New Cross stations (Zone 2) on the main rail network and London overground; about a 7 minute journey from London Bridge and 30 minutes from London Victoria. It is on bus routes 21, 36, 53, 136, 171, 172, 177, 225, 321, 343, 436, 453.
For exact directions to Goldsmiths please see the How to Find Us page on the Goldsmiths website.
Contact Us
Please email drc@gold.ac.uk with any queries about Decadence and War.
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Conference Organisers
Adam Alston (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Alice Condé (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Jane Desmarais (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Jessica Gossling (Goldsmiths, University of London)