Decadence Movement (Benacian Union)
The Decadence Movement was a trend in the arts towards the aesthetic fetishisation of the remaining traces of Imperial-era Shirerithian cultural artefacts in the Union-State following the widespread destruction of the Shiro-Benacian War, the turn towards Brutalist architecture and design during the post-war decade of reconstitution, particularly exacerbated by the concurrent Benacian capital liquidity crisis.
Primarily the preserve of the wellborn, those whose rank and status shielded them from the immediate attention of the Panopticon and Censorate, the movement saw the popularisation of Sovereign Dandyism, a mode of fashion with its origins in the Sovereign Confederation, the circulation of samizdata copies of immoral literature, including Imperial-era parodies of Vanic excess, now enjoyed for their titillating effect, and the repurposing of abandoned historic buildings as venues for parties and other instances of orgiastic excess where the faded glamour of ruined palatial chambers were enjoyed almost as much as the acts of collective hedonism themselves.
By identifying themselves with the frivolity of the old feudal nobility, the decadents rejected naturalistic realism and bourgeois values, embracing excess, artificiality, sensuality, and aesthetic refinement as a form of rebellion.
A certain cynical school of thought held that the dalliance of a disaffected youth with dissolution was a deliberate strategy on the part of the organs of power in the Union-State, ensuring that energies which might otherwise generate a domestic counterpart to the Nouveau Wave, or worse yet the Mango Anarchy, would instead be dissipated and spent upon mere fleeting gratification.
