Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives

This is a good and useful book that attempts, in Gerald Graff's terms, to "teach the conflict," regarding the career of Primitivism as an aspect of Modernism. Recent battles over "primitive" have been particularly interesting, as they've been driven by ideological and class issues as well as the usual academic pettiness regarding vocabulary. The intensity with which the parties in this conflict grab at the imaginary high ground and wallop each other with boring prose and snotty asides is still interesting, because it's still happening. Like the _Bell Curve_ nonsense, it will not go away. But unlike that, and the "underclass" and social eugenics nonsense it serves, there is no good reason to pick a right and wrong side, here. So what I tend to look for is the interesting side. Who has something to say that doesn't bore me, and doesn't use boredom as a weapon? Torgovnick doesn't. The fight has gone on, and this book is no longer at the hot edge of it, but the disagreements continue and "scholarship" has not settled them. This book is a great place to look for a discussion of the issues. You might well argue with it, but that's largely what it's for.

This is a great book and a fascinating topic -- the way that Western peoples react to "the other," from rejection to outright cultural theft. Content deals with everything from art and design to popular media portrayals of the "primitive," to scholarly works such as Margaret Mead's Samoan study.