Decadence : inaction in an age of industry

Abstract

In the fin-de-siècle, Decadence emerges as a mood, one of utter exhaustion. It leads to a breakdown, not necessarily of a psychologically depressive kind (although that is never far away), but one which, in its many manifestations, is also reflected in the disintegration of the book to make place for the independence of the page, as it were. This makes way, then, to the breakdown of the page for the autonomy of the sentence and the subsequent collapse of the sentence for the sovereignty of the word. And on it goes. In short, deconstruction becomes a kind of Decadence, and decadence thus understood, together with modernity coincide in their rejection of the tyranny of tradition. [excerpt]