Prof. Neville Morley (Classics and Ancient History), Dr Kate Hext (English) & Dr Joseph Sweetman (Psychology)
Read below to find out about this Development Fund project, led by prof. Neville Morley.
‘Decadence’ – labelling a kind of behaviour or even an entire culture as decaying and corrupt, a sign of imminent collapse – is rarely taken seriously as a way of thinking about politics. The term is too obviously polemical and rhetorical, associated with rabble-rousing and invective – where it is not simply limited to aesthetic movements of the late nineteenth century or to advertisements for ice cream and chocolate cake. However, the fact that idea is rhetorical does not mean it is therefore irrelevant; clearly it has power to arouse emotions or shape people’s understanding, as seen in the denunciations of ‘Western decadence’ offered recently by both Vladimir Putin and right-wing commentators on the themes of ‘wokeism’, gender identity and ‘Great Replacement Theory’. The claim that the state, society, nation or civilization is in a state of decay has represented both a source of anxiety and an approach to analysis of the present since classical antiquity, and continues to appeal to at least some audiences.
This project brought together researchers from a range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences – political theory, the history of ideas, literary studies, the analysis of contemporary right-wing movements and online communication, and classical reception – to explore ‘decadence’ seriously as a political and cultural theory. Each workshop involved prepared contributions from experts in different fields, exploring how their areas of study might contribute to the examination of the overall tradition of understanding society in such terms, in different periods and contexts. The first workshop considered ‘classical’ decadence; not just the familiar tropes of the ‘Decline and Fall’ of the Roman Republic and Empire, which have long served as a model for ideas of the symptoms and effects of decadence, but the earlier ideas of Greek political thinkers about the life-cycle of political regimes and the forces that lead to crisis and decay in the polity. The second workshop then examined the ways that such ideas were taken up and developed in post-Renaissance Europe, with the first explicit theories of ‘decadence’ in French authors like Montesquieu and Rousseau and the deployment of Roman history (especially the rise of Caesar and the invasion of barbarian hordes) in commentary on contemporary events.
The third workshop brought the discussion up to date through different perspectives on 20th-century and contemporary right-wing movements, comparing the rhetoric of decadence – and the implied need for revolutionary violence in order to restore the ‘natural’ order and health of the nation – from Nazism and Italian fascism via the French ‘New Right’ of the 1970s to present-day political campaigns and online chatrooms. This included discussion of the nature of the appeal of such ideas, and the question of how far understanding their intellectual roots could help combat them. The final workshop, devoted solely to discussion, returned to these themes, with the sense that ‘decadence’ offered one response to the crises of liberal democracy and capitalism – mostly, but not exclusively, a right-wing response – that framed the problem in a particular manner in order to aggregate different fears and grievances into a single movement and exhort it to action against a society perceived to have been captured and betrayed by different enemies.
The workshops were held online, allowing the participation of researchers from the USA and continental Europe as well as different parts of the UK. We agreed that there clearly is a significant topic here that requires further research, and identified a range of key themes, issues and problems to be addressed; key participants are now working together, under the leadership of Prof Morley, to develop funding proposals for further networking events and research activity, which will cover not just the history of the concept and its theoretical parameters but also empirical research into the nature of its appeal and concerted efforts to ensure its impact on current responses to societal threats.
Blog by prof. Neville Morley.