Table of Contents : Articles : Submissions : Contributors :Order : Links : Miscellania : Manifesto : Contact

Sir Francis, founder of the Dilettanti Society and the Hellfire Clun, painted in Oriental dress.

It is my aim to chip away at the patina encrusting this term. Deferring from definition, I would like instead to explore how the word emerged, the cultural and political forces that shaped it. Historians with a theoretical bent call this activity “genealogy.” Genealogical investigation avoids direct confrontation with such imponderables as, say, Is pink Goth?, confining itself, instead, to describing under what historical circumstances individual Goths have worn pink. This is the theoretician’s way of saying, “We don’t know what it is, but we know its effects when we see them.”

Letting the Genealogy out of the Bottle
Dandies and dilettantes are fellow travelers. Exiled in a world not of their choosing, they devote their lives to creating new worlds worthy of housing them. Dilettantes are generalists, and, as they bounce from idea to idea, pursuit to pursuit, delight to delight, their only constancy is loyalty to their own passion; dandies, of course, are specialists of the cloth. Single-mindedly riding their particular hobbyhorses, dandies and dilettantes are often dismissed as eccentrics—colorful, but intellectual and moral lightweights.