Discourse and the C20th

Chair: Phil Child

“The Decline of the West and the Rise of Cyclical History: Visions of Rome in the Inter-war period” by Jasmine Hunter-Evans

Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West (1918-1923) was an unprecedented success in Britain. That a cyclical analysis of decline, through the analogy of Rome and the West, could enlist such an intense reaction both positive and negative reveals how central Rome was in the discourse of the early twentieth century. Eugenicists, politicians, historians, classicists, psychologists not to mention writers, poets and artists all manipulated this relationship between Rome and the present. Rome was held up as a symbol of Empire, totalitarianism, and decline whether through barbarian invasion, societal decadence or genetic decay. In a period struggling to deal with the aftermath of the Great War, the decline of the British Empire, socio-economic depression, rising nationalism and international strife, it is perhaps unsurprising that a deterministic historical theory such as Spengler’s, which held a nihilistic vision of the outcome of Western civilization, would attract so much attention. By investigating the ways in which Rome was received in this period through a variety of case studies we can see how British culture redefined itself through its relationship to the Roman past. This paper aims to examine these varying receptions of Rome to uncover trends which involved not only concepts of decline and visions of the future but renegotiations of what constituted Western civilization.

“Radio Signals and the Cold War” by Esme Nicholson

The radio signal’s disregard for Cold War Berlin’s political borders points to a fundamental difference between the nature of politically-demarcated space and that defined by technology. The radio wave could roam within or hail from spaces citizens in the East could not. Drawing upon a selection of audio archival material, this paper explores exactly how these two topographies differ.

That mediated auditory space is less easily defined than the visual framing of a cinema screen implies the privileging of one sense over the other. Marshall McLuhan remarked ‘We are so visually biased that we call our wisest men visionaries, or seers!’ Yet the visual imperative remains. Radio technology leaves a very visual marker on the landscape of cities, and Berlin is no exception; its broadcasting houses and iconic transmission towers play their very own part in the history of the city divided by the wall. Conversely, cities shape the appearance of radios of the era, the world receiver offering a form of alternative atlas. This paper addresses the elusive nature of the radio wave, and how the spaces it carves cannot be controlled absolutely by those broadcasting them.

"'Wonderful Things': The Reception of Ancient Egypt’s Material Culture" by Matthew Skuse

In the early twentieth century the Western world was enamoured with the romance and the mystery of Ancient Egyptian civilisation.  A great number of artists, jewellers, authors, and sculptors were, and continue to be, inspired by the artistic products of ancient Egypt. However, the fascination which arose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was not the first instance of a profound Egyptian impression upon the literature and arts of the Western world. This paper explores the unique interactions of Archaic Greece with Egyptian material culture, questioning whether we can recognise a significant association of Egyptian aesthetics with particular concepts in Greek life (and death). Along the way, the paper will highlight some of the surprising similarities between this unique ancient relationship and the reception of Egypt in the arts of the modern world, over two thousand years later.