Decadence has an uneasy relationship with the body. It is at once a site of profound sensorial pleasure, and a material trapping to be escaped through aesthetic or narcotic stimulation. Decadence is ‘of’ the body – it augments its sensorial capabilities and cultivates uncommon tastes – but it also recognises the body as that which threatens to limit more refined and perfectly debauched pursuits of the imagination. This was the case in the late nineteenth century when different artistic movements were jostling for the limelight – naturalists, decadents and symbolists, especially – but it is also the case in our own time, which has seen a revival of ‘pleasure activism’ and unabashed aestheticism at the very same moment when afrofuturists, among others, have turned to the imaginative realm to escape the impact of systemic racism on visibly marked bodies. The recent publication of Ross Douthat’s The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success (2020) also suggests that decadence is once again entering popular discursive terrain in ways that mark a striking contrast with its non-conformist pedigree. Moreover, at the heart of a resurgent culture war, we find competing perspectives on the body: those bodies that are deemed suitably productive, useful, and appropriate in their tastes, dispositions and orientations, and those that are not.

What, then, are we to make of the decadent body both historically, and in the present moment? What makes a body ‘decadent’, and for whom? How has the body been shaped by accusations of decadence, and in what ways have individuals or groups reclaimed decadence as a site of reaction, resistance, transcendence, or disidentification?

Programme

Conference Eve: Wednesday 27 July

5.30 – 7.00 Screening of Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963), Richard Hoggart Building Cinema

Introduction by David Weir (Cooper Union), ‘Decadent Bodies, Flaming Creatures: Jack Smith and the Baudelairean Cinema of the 1960s’.
CLICK HERE to download a PDF of the accompanying notes.
Thanks to the Filmmakers’ Co-operative, New York, NY, for making this screening possible.

Day 1: Thursday 28 July

9.15 Registration Weston Atrium

9.45 Welcome from the Decadence Research Centre LG02

10.00 Keynote               Chair: Alice Condé (Goldsmiths)     LG02                  

Ana Parejo Vadillo (Birkbeck), ‘Red is the Colour of Life’

11.00 Refreshments Weston Atrium       

11.30 Panel A: Decadent bodies on display in popular performance     Chair: Jane Desmarais (Goldsmiths) LG02

Veronica Isaac (University of Brighton), ‘A “decadent” dalliance with desire?: The “immoral” costume conventions shaping the bodies of late 19th century Principal Boys’

Kate Holmes (University of Exeter), ‘Making a Sober Spectacle of His Body from Risky Display: Jules Léotard in London’

Viv Gardner (University of Manchester), ‘Delight and decay: the spectatorial experience of the dancing body of the 5th Marquis of Anglesey (1875-1905)’

1.00 Lunch Delegates are encouraged to visit an exhibition of decadent artworks at their leisure (PSB Weston Atrium)

2.00 Parallel Panels B and C

Panel B: Spectrality, monstrosity, and degeneracy                   Chair: Isobel Hurst (Goldsmiths) LG02

Giovanni Bassi (LUM University), ‘Amorous Bodies, Spectral Proxies: Photographic Portraits in Late-Nineteenth Century Poetry’

Jon Stone (Franklin & Marshall College), ‘Celebrating the Monster: Otherness in Zinovieva-Annibal’s The Tragic Menagerie’

Eleanor Keane (Goldsmiths), ‘Decadent Bodies and Spectral Forms: Althea Gyles’s illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s “The Harlot’s House” (1904)’

Panel C: Body parts and desire  Chair: Robert Pruett-Vergara (Independent Scholar) LG01

Kate Hext (University of Exeter), ‘Decadent Eyes’

Natasha Booth-Johnson (University of Birmingham), ‘Edith Simcox’s Queer Bodies’

Kate Foster (Institute of Modern Languages Research), ‘Classically Decadent: Cyborgs, Statues and Gender in Monsieur Vénus’

3.30 Tea Weston Atrium

4.00 Panel D: National and social bodies in decline                 Chair: Adam Alston (Goldsmiths) LG02

Melanie Hawthorne (Texas A&M University), ‘On the Eve of the Future’

Paula Alexandra Guimarães (University of Minho), ‘Picturing the Nation and the Poet as Decadent Bodies – A Fin-de-Siècle Portuguese Malady Diagnosed’

David Weir (Cooper Union), ‘The Decadent Body Politic in Il gattopardo’

5.30 Drinks reception   Weston Atrium

Day 2: Friday 29 July

9.30 Registration Weston Atrium

10.00 Parallel Panels E and F

Panel E: Decadence and domesticity               Chair: Jon Stone (Franklin & Marshall College) LG01

Matthew Ingleby (Queen Mary University of London), ‘“You ought to see the miserable rooms…and you ought to see one of your tenants die”: Rental Snuff, circa 1895’

Sally Blackburn-Daniels (University of Liverpool and Open University), ‘“His red flesh their forbidden fruit”: Permeable Bodies in Hval’s Paradise Rot’

Ginevra Bianchini (Trinity College Dublin), ‘The Decadence and Decay of the Body in Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation’

Panel F: Decadent style                       Chair: Jessica Gossling (Goldsmiths)  LG02

Robert Pruett-Vergara (Independent Scholar), ‘Eros at the End of Symbolism: Remy de Gourmont’s Le Désarroi’

Sam Kunkel (Independent Scholar), ‘The Glorified Textual Body: Arthur Machen’s Theory of Style’

Victoria C. Roskams (Mansfield College), ‘Decadence Redoubled: Reflecting the Musical Body in Stanley Makower’s The Mirror of Music (1895)’

11.30 Refreshments   Weston Atrium

12.00 Panel G: Queer transmissions     Chair: Robert Stilling (Florida State University) LG01

Amy Sailer (University of Utah), ‘Carl Phillips’s Decadent Pastoral’

William Rees (University of Exeter), ‘Be Yourself - Decadent Bodies on the 1970s Dancefloor’

Phoebe Patey-Ferguson (Rose Bruford),‘“And She Went All the Way Up to the Elbow!”: Fisting as Decadent Contemporary Performance Practice’

1.30 Lunch Delegates are encouraged to visit an exhibition of decadent artworks at their leisure (PSB Weston Atrium)

2.30 Panel H: Landscapes of decadence and desire: Vernon Lee      Chair: Sally Blackburn-Daniels (Open University) LG01

Anna Shane (University of Exeter), ‘The Pursuit of Love and Knowledge: Vernon Lee’s gothic stories and the queer knowledges of collecting’

Louise Wenman-James (University of Surrey), ‘“They can touch us like living creatures”: Decadent Landscapes in Vernon Lee’s travel writing’

Robert Stilling (Florida State University), ‘The Addict as Saint: Decadent Bodies and the Post-Millennial Indian Novel in English’

4.00 Tea  Weston Atrium

4.30 Plenary     Chair: Jessica Gossling (Goldsmiths)  LG01

Martin O’Brien (Queen Mary University of London), ‘Until the Last Breath is Breathed: Performing Queer Death’

5.30 Close of conference  

8.30 Decadence @ IKLECTIK performance night at IKLECTIK Art Lab, Waterloo

Live performances from Oozing Gloop, Sigi Moonlight and Hasard Le Sin  
With Coco Deville as our esteemed host, film by Miss HerNia, & sounds by Gin

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.

The conference will be held in the Professor Stuart Hall Building. Registration will be in the Weston Atrium.

For exact directions to Goldsmiths please see the How to Find Us page on the Goldsmiths website.

For directions to Decadence @ IKLECTIK (Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, SE1 7LG) please see the Contact page on IKLECTIK’s website.