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— Written by San Choudhury and Reece Barlow
(While this essay was written by us, during the writing process, we invited members of Scholar Square to join us for a salon discussion on the idea of light academia. We are grateful to Patricia, Sarah, and Sanah for generously sharing their thoughts and reflections with us.)

We’re tired of dark academia being the dominant aesthetic for anything remotely related to academia, scholarship, and intellectual life. Not because it feels boring or has become overused and overdone, but because of the shameful lack of alternative cultural images through which scholars, researchers, and academics can recognise themselves. We are especially annoyed because dark academia has become the near-default way of imagining what life as an academic, researcher, or scholar looks like. 

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On the surface, dark academia appears to be a visual language through which academia is represented in popular media. Scroll through Pinterest’s collection of ‘dark academia’ for 30 seconds, and the material elements making up this idea become obvious very quickly: books, pens, glasses, paper, notebooks, beverages, handwriting, leather chairs, vintage Ivy league clothes. Of course, it’s not the objects in and of themselves, but it's their curation in certain tones, colour palettes, and moods that give off the dark academia vibe. If it feels gloomy and overcast, yet warm and inviting; muted, but by no means devoid of colour; a little old-school, yet distinctly gothic; serious but eerily pretentious, then that's dark academia. 

But what if we dug a bit deeper and refused to stop at the surface? 

We certainly don’t think it to be a mere visual language. And neither do a couple of other scholars who gathered together with us in an online salon for discussing the topic. 

This collection of images, texts, and videos that has proliferated as an online sub-culture tell us something more. They seem to be constantly suggesting that, as Patricia said, “scholarship is the lonesome pursuit of knowledge”. That yes, it's “the dark aesthetic and all of that” but, for many of us, it has “always had this sense of moodiness and broodiness and learning by oneself” – an experience that feels extremely “lonely and isolating”. 

A scholar toils away by flickering candlelight, or perhaps the warm light of a brass lamp, at one in the morning while the rest of the world sleeps. She sits alone in a room lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a vintage patterned rug beneath their feet, and a mahogany desk scattered with notebooks and the pages of an aged book. Outside, the rain taps against the window as she wrestles with ideas, determined to weather the storm of inquiry just as the sturdy tree beyond the glass withstands the storm outside. Her eyes feel heavy and her thoughts come to her muddled, but she must soldier on. This is the price of having earned a place at a prestigious institution. She was one of the chosen few. Now, she must ensure the work is carried out with the utmost rigour; she must show grit and discipline. And above all, when the sun rises, she will show no trace of the struggle. The long, lonesome night will disappear beneath her effortless performance of confidence, expressed through her manner, language, and style.

The dark academic is always by themselves. This may be a matter of solitude or isolation, or perhaps a bit of both. A certain necessity to withdraw when we are learning, studying, and researching is hard to dismiss. One needs time and space not only to think, but to hear one’s thoughts. But solitude just as easily turns into isolation when the scholar becomes, as Sarah pointed out, "hyper-independent". 

The fierce independence from one's fellow scholars – the need to prove yourself as the one who has it all, who can do it all alone – is coded into the singular figure of the dark academic. If you see yourself as one of the chosen few, it only makes sense that you want to prove your worth. Elitism must be protected at all costs. And so the scholar retreats into the dark room where scholarship is lived as an individual test of endurance. 

Apart from the intense individualism that dark academia glorifies, it also evokes an ideal of utmost intellectual rigour. They will not stop until they are absolutely sure of the absolute correctness of their work. If it is hard, it is because it is meant to be hard. The pain, the struggle, and the suffering are all part of it because they demonstrate one's commitment to the highest standards of intellectual rigour. Rigour becomes a kind of rigamorale. 

But at the same time, the struggle in all its ugliness must never be on display. Any exhaustion, uncertainty, or self-doubt must be dressed with robes of brilliance, exceptionalism, and composure.

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Is this really the kind of image of scholarship and the scholar we want to cling to?