Babel

the darkest part of academia is the sticky imperialist hangover

Babel by R. F. Kuang is what dark academia should be.

I have many opinions about the genre in general and I will need to get a paperback copy of Babel so I can liberally annotate the text upon my re-read of it. I currently only have the Waterstones exclusive edition which is not to be marred by pen marks. I am sure I will one day write an entire essay just on my thoughts of dark academia, but for now, I will focus on this masterpiece. I am already an R. F. Kuang fan because of The Poppy War, but Babel is in a league of its own.

“This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances that demanded it.”

I have read a lot of dark academia books because I love the genre and the aesthetics. I have always found the greatest stumbling block to the genre is the reliance on imperialism – both in the literary genre and in academia, itself – without critiquing or even acknowledging that reliance and influence. As a recovering academic myself, I have tried to move out from under the long shadow of colonial worldviews in my own work (to varying degrees of success – it’s a work in progress) and have been continually disappointed by nuggets of colonialism in dark academia books. In my opinion, the darkest part of academia is the sticky imperialist hangover. Kuang understands the need to deconstruct the imperialist parts of academia and thus crafted the perfect dark academia book. I will be chasing this high for the rest of my life. My only regret is not finishing it sooner, but in my defense, I was avoiding finishing it because then what.