Primitivism After Its Poststructural Eclipse

Chapter 1 focuses on the conceptual and theoretical problems that pertain to literary primitivism. It surveys the breadth of previous scholarship and points out that a comprehensive study that proceeded according to received usage would be hopelessly vast owing to the ahistorical presuppositions that have tended to inform its use. It sets out the terms by which the book redefines the term--especially, that primitivism was an aesthetic project specific to the historical moment when the possibility of primitive experience was perceived to be at the point of obsolescence. Transformed thus into an inherently speculative notion, it fell to the capacities of art to revive and reanimate the remnants of “primitive” (i.e., noncapitalist) social realities. The chapter reviews the previous postmodern generation of scholarship on primitivism, arguing that the historical nature of primitivism was obscured when scholars, employing the methods of poststructuralism, restricted their inquiries to questions of representation.