DOOOOMMM!!!!!!!

If ever there was a figure to be taken seriously but not literally, it’s Oswald Spengler. The catty remark of A.L. Rowse, that “because the Germans were defeated, Western civilisation is to be regarded as coming to an end”, is unfair but not completely untrue. There’s a lot more to Spengler’s ideas than that characterisation (not least because much of his framework of thought predated WWI), but they are pervaded with the masochistic joys of apocalyptic expectation, and a sense of superiority over everyone else who hasn’t yet realised that they’re living in decadent and pathetic times. Spengler represents a fascinating offshoot of C19 critiques of modernity, throwing biological analogies and the second law of thermodynamics into the mix as explanations and justifications of feelings of Weltschmerz and cultural malaise.

It’s therefore entirely reasonable that there should be a conference to mark the 100th anniversary of the publication of Der Untergang des Abendlandes; it’s a complex work, frequently coming across as entirely mad if you read it as an account of the actual world in historical or social-scientific terms, but never less than a window into its cultural epoch, a key moment in the development of the literature of cultural decline whose influence persists. It’s a more open question whether a newly-founded society named after and dedicated to the principles and intellectual project of Oswald Spengler is necessarily going to welcome the critical voices needed for a proper evaluation of the work, and one hopes they will also try to something about the extreme maleness of their activities so far.

Much as I would like to eavesdrop – not least as an opportunity to break out my collection of black, doom-related t-shirts (Bohren und der Club of Gore’s Black Earth, Questionable Content’s Coffee of Doom, Girls With Slingshot’s Ghost Kitty etc.) – I am too over-committed to contemplate it, even if I thought they’d have me. But this does seem an opportune moment to get round to making another of my past publications available to those without JSTOR access: Decadence as a Theory of History, from 2004, which is still one of my favourites…