Is It Possible to Critique Academia through Dark Academia?

When I wrote The Killing Spell and described it as “language magic” there was the immediate assumption that I was writing Dark Academia. This shocked me at first, but on further reflection, I realized that there’s this false belief that linguistics is only for “smart people.” I outright reject that notion. The Killing Spell hopes to discuss linguistics from the vantage point of how it’s used in the real world. The street poets. The struggling language learners. The code-switchers.

We are the shapers of language—not linguists in their ivory towers.

However, many people still seem to think that Academia is a great equalizer. (I used to think so, too.) But after years of teaching and learning, even going so far as to receive my M.Ed, I came to understand a tragic truth. Study after study finds that the biggest determiner of academic success is not ability—but wealth.

It’s an uncomfortable fact to sit with because it goes against everything we’ve been taught. If we work hard, if we try our best, we too, can make it. We are desperate to believe in the lie of meritocracy, so we repeat this mantra to ourselves. Meanwhile, the cogs in Academia keep turning and are successful in keeping most of us out.

Dark Academia, which is often meant to critique these issues, will place a plucky, minority character in the very system that has been designed to work against her—and watch while she struggles. It’s intended to be social commentary, but the focus ends up being incredibly narrow.

We see only the exceptional few who were clever enough to force their way onto university campuses. The characters who have been left outside are non-existent, as if their stories are not worthy of being told, as if they are unintelligent for not gaining entry and thus can be ignored. Dark Academia is a world unto itself, where nothing of substance exists beyond its ivy-covered walls.

This is especially true of stories that deal with so called “academic subjects” such as language. The common narrative we see in these books seem to suggest that command of language is a sign of superior intelligence, which is not only demonstrably untrue but also damaging to those who don’t fit into the mold of “Proper English.” People of Color, specifically, are held to a higher standard than others when trying to communicate the issues we face. Our every word is hyper-analyzed. Every sentence and punctuation mark broken apart. Even our tone or accent is reviewed. All of these “mistakes” are added up and weighed against what we are saying. If there are more errors than not, our message is invalidated.

The greatest irony though, is that the standard of “Proper English” is the very embodiment of colonialism that Dark Academia rebels against but almost never meaningfully criticizes. Imagine, for example, a character speaking Hawaiian-Pidgin in the halls of an elite academic institution—or does that ruin the “vibe” of the story? At a certain point, our stereotypical expectations of the genre lead us to snobbery over true intellectual reflection, simply because the medium of the message doesn’t know what an Oxford comma is.

Colloquial English, Broken English, Creoles, and Pidgins, are not a less intelligent way to communicate. More than that, I’d argue that they are a natural counterweight to the elitism of “Proper English.” These languages are in fact, the best way to riot against it because it is near impossible to fight and win against colonizers in the language they developed to oppress us.

In that same vein, genres like Urban Fantasy, and Romantasy, which are often dismissed for being “junk food,” are the one of the best mediums to address elitism. These genres are subversive because they actively question what fantasy “should” be and challenge those assumptions. On the other hand, the foundation of Dark Academia is Academia—and there is no way out of it.

Dark Academia cannot critique itself because in doing so, it would cease to exist.

Think of the way that language is introduced in most SFF literature. Usually, the character is an expert in that language. Usually, they have a degree or some other impressive credential behind them. Usually, they are working from within the colonial institution to bring it down.

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy these books, but I do think that they fail to reckon with the larger themes at play. If Academia is colonial, if it is classist, and elitist, then who is its disrupter? Is it the character with perfect grammar who has played the game and won—or is it the mob of people outside who are slinging curses and ramming down the gates?