Lecture: "The Aesthetics of Traditionalism as Revolt"

Is traditionalism merely metaphysics and a critique of modernity? Not only. It is a style. A body. Finally, a form that precedes the argument.

Evola wrote like a priest — deliberately obscure to filter out the "uninitiated." Jünger described the hell of the trenches with entomological coldness — and this was an aesthetic program, not just a style. D’Annunzio captured an entire city — Fiume — and turned it into a living art project with speeches, uniforms, and rituals that Mussolini would later copy verbatim. Guénon vanished into a symbol — literally: he converted to Islam, moved to Cairo, and became a sheikh. Drieu la Rochelle sought beauty where death was already in the air — and found it in collaboration and suicide.

What united them? Not doctrine, but aesthetics. The conviction that form is truth. That beauty is not an ornament, but the foundation of a worldview. That if you make an idea beautiful enough, it requires no proof.

So, let’s talk about how traditionalism thought through images, bodies, and styles. And why this aesthetic still works today.

What will we discuss?

• Why traditionalism as an intellectual movement "looks" appealing and how it functions as a tool of influence.

• How aesthetics became doctrine: from Guénon's hermetic texts to Jünger's trench prose.

• Three distinct ways of "thinking through beauty" — asceticism, danger, and performance.

• The paradox: traditionalists loathed modernism yet utilized its techniques.

• Why this aesthetic still resonates today and what to do about it (if anything needs to be done).

Lecturer: Bohdana Nosenok — PhD in Philosophy, cultural theorist. Researcher of French cultural studies, the methodology of the "New History" (Annales school), and interdisciplinary approaches to cultural analysis. Translator of literary works from English, French, and Italian. Author of the travel novel Distance.

Additional Information:

• Lecture recording: Yes, for participants.

• Language of the lecture: Ukrainian.