OriginsWhere there may be academia, there may be dark academia. Dark academia is academia’s black swan and shadow self, a mirror that reflects and opposes: it’s how academics wish to see themselves, the apotheosis and the parody of who they at all times already are. Pythagoras, chased by enemies, refusing to run through a field of beans because he believed they resembled fetuses, and wouldn’t kill them, so died himself as a substitute. Hypatia, Neoplatonist mathematician, martyred for teaching philosophy. The invention of the zero.
Dark academia is each young and old, richly storied yet not possible to pin down. But the web iteration of the genre [1] officially began in 1992, with...
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