Seminar on the relationship between decadence, nationalism and primitivism, 19 April 2024

Eduard Wiiralt. Kalevipoeg resting, 1917. Art Museum of Estonia

On 19 April 2024, a seminar on the connections between decadence, nationalism and primitivism will be held at the Under and Tuglas Literature Center of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. Two seminal articles by decadence and/or modernism scholars will be discussed – Matthew Potolsky’s Decadence, Nationalism, and the Logic of Canon Formation (2006) and Michael Bell’s Primitivism. Modernism as anthropology (2010). The texts will be introduced by Viola Parente-Čapkova and Riikka Rossi – both members of the decadence project since the beginning of 2024.

Additional reading: Mirjam Hinrikus’s interview with Pirjo Lyytikäinen and Matthew Potolsky Flowing in the spirit of weakness, melancholy, disgust and pessimism, which was published in Sirp on 8 September 2017.