Classics, Elitism and Dark Academia

A tangent on Classics, classism and the internet's obsession with both

Photo by Thomas Kelley on Unsplash

What is dark academia?

The internet often taps into aesthetics to describe appeals, tastes and genres grouping actions, palettes, music, books etc. all under umbrella terms to carve out a niche. One such aesthetic, the aforementioned dark academia has an obsession with education, old money, leather bound tomes, art, literature and, most importantly, Classics.

Drawing primarily from Donna Tart’s smash hit novel The Secret History, a book following the journey of a group of elite Classics students to the murder of one of their classmates, dark academia finds pride in this morally grey, dark realm of education, more leaning to that of educating the soul rather than of the brain. Of course, while not every book, film and song that falls under the aesthetic features classicists, the draws of a classical education permeate every corner, as do ties to old, elite universities. When searching the term on Pinterest, one is greeted by images of long nights in the library, gothic architecture, typewriters, wool overcoats, and a sea of dark beige and soothing browns.

This aesthetic, though new, already has its flaws. Having a genre so closely based on the pursuits of the wealthy, new money type of academic inherently has to deal with the flaws that target the very same institutions: elitism, racism and ableism to name a few. This unfortunate coexistence has been raised by critics and fans of the aesthetic alike, as is raised by the likes of Rowan Ellis, who gives an eloquent overview of dark academia in a video essay.

Ellis argues in critique of dark academia that a focus on the western literary canon, being predominantly white and male, will be automatically exclusionary. Similar views are also elaborated on by Bookish Brews, who raises that the romanticisation of an elite education is mainly targeted at the way things used to be, thus cannot escape from the horrors of slavery and negligence that helped build educational institutions such as Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard. This is especially highlighted in her point about the hoarding of knowledge, wherein she argues the image of universities hoarding knowledge, and stealing it away for the western world, is key to the success of dark academia. This point is crucial, as we shall now unravel, for an underlying flaw in the field of Classics too.

So how does this relate to Classics?

The field of Classics is had ties to wealth, prejudice, elitism and eurocentrism. According to Perale, writing for Cambridge University press, a mere total of 1204 students in the UK took an ancient language at A level (Latin or Classical Greek), a mere 20th of those taking the likes of biology and the most recent in a trend of downwards progression in numbers as of the time of publishing. In the same article, Perale quotes the Council of University Classics Departments’ Diversity Report of the same year, which begins:

‘Classics in the UK has particular problems relating to the dominance (and perceptions of that dominance) of a few ancient (pre-1800) universities.’

Perale marks this as alarming, and I cannot help but agree. However, we can start to see a strong, direct connection to the aforementioned dark academia aesthetic here. The students are a select few, studying mostly at ancient, elite, well respected and wealthy institutions. Perale goes on to mention later the associations of Classics students with their own field, as they brought up words like ‘privilege’, ‘Eton’ and frequently the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Thus, we can see why dark academia is so drawn to Classics. Returning to Bookish Brews’ point about the hoarding of knowledge, this was certainly true with Oxford and Cambridge’s Classics courses. The Ashmolean Museum, a valuable resource for Oxford classicists, is mostly the remnants of a private collection of (dubiously sourced) artefacts bequeathed to the University upon the owner’s death. To me, the overlapping draw of dark academia and Classics is to feel as though you are part of something secret, elusive, valuable and most crucially elite, in terms of strength of mind and character, but more often than not wealth.

The dwindling of numbers and negative associations of Classics, though nothing new, are nonetheless an undesirable blot on a subject so many wish to study. The very divide between Classics and class is inherent in the root of the word itself, both classics and class stemming from the latin word clamare (call out), with a classis being a group of people called out. This is explained well by Professor Edith Hall in her work regarding the reception of Classics and class throughout time. As well as providing the preceding explanation of the etymology, she also mentions Thomas Paine’s thoughts on Classics. As discussed by Hall, scholars like Paine in the 17th and 18th century argued that, seen as the material surviving from Classical times is written by the elite, it is thus only for the modern elite to study. While obviously outdated, this plays into some interesting insights for the accessibility of Classics. Chelsie Van Hierden, in her blog post on classical literature, brings up that the abandonment of mass readership and relegation to academia cause such to become increasingly oligarchic, to the point of aristocracy. This is clearly true for Greek and Roman writings, perpetually on the brink of being so obscure as to be relegated to academia.

In her book Papyrus, Irene Vallejo constantly brings up the position of education in the ancient world, showing frequently how it is always a sign of wealth — one can only become educated on the likes of philosophy and history by having a workforce of slaves to bring in the wealth for you. This is evident in the sorts of writers that survive today, mostly being aristocrats. Education today, though not quite being a clear repetition of the past, is drawing scarily close. To most, a practical education is a tool or a stepping stone to a high paying job. As with ancient times, it is mostly the wealthy that seem to be able to afford an education in the arts, and mostly only private schools that educate in Classics.

How does this all tie together?

In an odd sort of way, the toxic relationship dark academia has with actual academia may work out for the betterment of the both. As the aesthetic becomes more accessible, with books like R. F. Kuang’s Babel bringing a brilliant critique of the colonial roots of academia, and hopefully soon other authors following in her wake, the diversification could help draw more people in. If dark academia works to avoid excluding people of diverse backgrounds, and continues to address the problems it currently glamourises or hides, it could be the route into the arts for so many new people. Of course, this does not solve the problems of either Classics or dark academia, but it could certainly mean hefty progress for both. So do I believe that we can undo over a millennia of problems with a TikTok aesthetic? No, I do not. Change though, however slow, is still change, and this may be a stepping stone for better academia with more scholars from a wider range of backgrounds.