Dark academia: how institutions fail learning
The main critique of dark academia is its centralisation of cultural and economic privilege.
The daydreams we conjure are often escapist, attempting to actualise what we subconsciously recognise to be missing.
The first time I read Donna Tartt’s
The Secret History, my daydreams were haunted by the woollen plaid blazers and wire-rimmed spectacles of dark academia for some time afterwards. What interested me was not just the colour palette and textures, but the base thirst for knowledge free of concern for employment prospects or grades. It was so contrary to my own studies, dictated by exams and assignments where it seemed my marks would determine both my future and my personal worth. But reading Norse mythology in library books and scribbling unremarkable poetry in my Notes app without the daunting awareness of an upcoming exam, I found I didn’t actually hate studying I hated the anxiety that surrounded it. In it’s romantic