On February 27th, 2018, Donna Jones (UC Berkeley, English) presented a lecture titled “The Ambiguous Promise of European Decline: Race and Historical Pessimism in the Era of the Great War.” In her lecture, Jones discussed the rise of pessimism in Europe around the time of the First World War. Earlier that day, Jones also led a seminar titled “Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Negritude and Negrismo.” These events were sponsored by the department of Comparative Literature in conjunction with the IGCS and many other departments at Cornell, testifying to the interdisciplinary appeal of Jones’ work. Jones drew the material for her lecture from the introduction to her current book project, The Ambiguous Promise of European Decline. She put a number of important western intellectuals in dialogue with one another as she explored the unique historical period around the First World War, when many authors expressed a growing sense of crisis and pessimism at what seemed to be a Europe in decline. Two works in particular were central to Jones’ discussion: Oswald Spengler’s Der Untergang des Abendlandes and Paul Valéry’s The Crisis of the Mind. Jones advocated for a synchronic, rather than a diachronic view of the period and in general suggested a complex and subtle view of the topic, drawing on multiple sources within Europe, as well as on non-European perspectives including a number of fascinating images from Latin America. Jones thorough familiarity with the Western intellectual tradition as well as the expansive range of her insights on the topic will be presented in greater depth and more detail in her forthcoming book. (Nicholas Zyzda)
