Daniel Stoljar
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195306583
- eISBN:
- 9780199786619
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195306589.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter concludes the book by doing three things: reviewing the reasons for rejecting eliminativism and primitivism; criticizing an independent argument for these views that would, if ...
More
This chapter concludes the book by doing three things: reviewing the reasons for rejecting eliminativism and primitivism; criticizing an independent argument for these views that would, if successful, also undermine our own position — this is an argument founded on the idea, known as “revelation”, that understanding experience means knowing its essence; and finally, summarizing and making explicit some general morals.Less
This chapter concludes the book by doing three things: reviewing the reasons for rejecting eliminativism and primitivism; criticizing an independent argument for these views that would, if successful, also undermine our own position — this is an argument founded on the idea, known as “revelation”, that understanding experience means knowing its essence; and finally, summarizing and making explicit some general morals.
Crawford Gribben
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195325317
- eISBN:
- 9780199785605
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195325317.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History
This chapter provides a thorough account of the Cromwellian invasion and its political background and military history, illustrating the centrality of its religious dynamic. It contextualizes the ...
More
This chapter provides a thorough account of the Cromwellian invasion and its political background and military history, illustrating the centrality of its religious dynamic. It contextualizes the theological debates by describing the economic condition of the administration, the religious condition of the army, and the tensions between the religious needs of protestant soldiers and those of the Irish natives. It describes the reading culture of the period in the context of the Atlantic archipelago, and the competing ideas of reformation and emerging denominational networks alongside the insistent primitivism, prophetic individualism, and anticlericalism of the period.Less
This chapter provides a thorough account of the Cromwellian invasion and its political background and military history, illustrating the centrality of its religious dynamic. It contextualizes the theological debates by describing the economic condition of the administration, the religious condition of the army, and the tensions between the religious needs of protestant soldiers and those of the Irish natives. It describes the reading culture of the period in the context of the Atlantic archipelago, and the competing ideas of reformation and emerging denominational networks alongside the insistent primitivism, prophetic individualism, and anticlericalism of the period.
Dorothy Stringer
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823231478
- eISBN:
- 9780823241088
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823231478.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This book highlights references to nineteenth-century U.S. slavery and anti-Black racism in literary and photographic projects begun during the late 1920s and early 1930s, including novels by William ...
More
This book highlights references to nineteenth-century U.S. slavery and anti-Black racism in literary and photographic projects begun during the late 1920s and early 1930s, including novels by William Faulkner and Nella Larsen, and portraits by Carl Van Vechten. These texts share a representational crisis, in which distinctions between present, quotidian racism and a massive, fully racialized historical trauma disappear. All identify persistent historical traumatization with intense subjective states (including madness, religious ecstasy, narcissism, and fetishistic enjoyment), and each explores the conservative, even coercive social character of such links between psyche and history. When the past of enslavement is not even past, narration freezes, black and white women lose their capacity to question or resist social and domestic violence, and racial politics fail. Anticipating contemporary trauma studies by decades, these disparate modernists' works constitute not an expounded or avowed but an interstitial trauma theory, which finds its shape in the spaces left by conventional public discourse. Their works parallel important essays by psychoanalytic thinkers of the same era, including Joan Riviere, Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, and Walter Benjamin, and their joint explication of relationships among psyche, history, and race offers important resources for psychoanalytic approaches to racial difference today. Despite their analytic acuity, however, Faulkner, Larsen, and Van Vechten also themselves carry the traumatic past forward into the future. Indeed, the two novelists' tragic depictions of a triumphant color line and the photographer's insistence on an idiom of black primitivism lent support to white supremacy in the twentieth century.Less
This book highlights references to nineteenth-century U.S. slavery and anti-Black racism in literary and photographic projects begun during the late 1920s and early 1930s, including novels by William Faulkner and Nella Larsen, and portraits by Carl Van Vechten. These texts share a representational crisis, in which distinctions between present, quotidian racism and a massive, fully racialized historical trauma disappear. All identify persistent historical traumatization with intense subjective states (including madness, religious ecstasy, narcissism, and fetishistic enjoyment), and each explores the conservative, even coercive social character of such links between psyche and history. When the past of enslavement is not even past, narration freezes, black and white women lose their capacity to question or resist social and domestic violence, and racial politics fail. Anticipating contemporary trauma studies by decades, these disparate modernists' works constitute not an expounded or avowed but an interstitial trauma theory, which finds its shape in the spaces left by conventional public discourse. Their works parallel important essays by psychoanalytic thinkers of the same era, including Joan Riviere, Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, and Walter Benjamin, and their joint explication of relationships among psyche, history, and race offers important resources for psychoanalytic approaches to racial difference today. Despite their analytic acuity, however, Faulkner, Larsen, and Van Vechten also themselves carry the traumatic past forward into the future. Indeed, the two novelists' tragic depictions of a triumphant color line and the photographer's insistence on an idiom of black primitivism lent support to white supremacy in the twentieth century.
Rebecca Sanchez
- Published in print:
- 1979
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479828869
- eISBN:
- 9781479810628
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479828869.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Deafening Modernism tells the story of aesthetic modernism from the perspective of Deaf and disability insight. It traces the ways that considerations of Deaf culture provide a vital and largely ...
More
Deafening Modernism tells the story of aesthetic modernism from the perspective of Deaf and disability insight. It traces the ways that considerations of Deaf culture provide a vital and largely untapped resource for understanding the history of American language politics and the impact that history has had on modernist aesthetic production by productively reframing questions that have been central to the field of modernist studies: the tension between an emerging celebrity culture and theories of impersonality, the apparent paradox of an aesthetic simultaneously fascinated with primitivism and making it new, the juxtaposition and indeterminacy at the heart of modernist difficulty, and the apparent disjunction between imagism and epic in the careers of many prominent modernist writers. In discussing Deaf studies in these unexpected contexts, Deafening Modernism aims to highlight the contributions of Deaf and crip insight to broader discussions of the intersections between images, bodies and text, demonstrating the importance of the field even and especially in places where no literal deafness or disability is located.Less
Deafening Modernism tells the story of aesthetic modernism from the perspective of Deaf and disability insight. It traces the ways that considerations of Deaf culture provide a vital and largely untapped resource for understanding the history of American language politics and the impact that history has had on modernist aesthetic production by productively reframing questions that have been central to the field of modernist studies: the tension between an emerging celebrity culture and theories of impersonality, the apparent paradox of an aesthetic simultaneously fascinated with primitivism and making it new, the juxtaposition and indeterminacy at the heart of modernist difficulty, and the apparent disjunction between imagism and epic in the careers of many prominent modernist writers. In discussing Deaf studies in these unexpected contexts, Deafening Modernism aims to highlight the contributions of Deaf and crip insight to broader discussions of the intersections between images, bodies and text, demonstrating the importance of the field even and especially in places where no literal deafness or disability is located.
Trevor Murphy
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199262885
- eISBN:
- 9780191719004
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199262885.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy
This chapter addresses the question of primitivism in the Natural History by examining Pliny's account of the primitive Chauci, inhabitants of the north-west German coast. The rather hostile ...
More
This chapter addresses the question of primitivism in the Natural History by examining Pliny's account of the primitive Chauci, inhabitants of the north-west German coast. The rather hostile description of this tribe draws on a long-established discourse concerning the watery chaos beyond the limits of the known world. In this way, the text equates the cosmos as it is ordered by nature with the world as it is ordered by the Romans, with their genius for imposing stability on chaos — a talent exemplified in the story of how the Cloaca Maxima was built.Less
This chapter addresses the question of primitivism in the Natural History by examining Pliny's account of the primitive Chauci, inhabitants of the north-west German coast. The rather hostile description of this tribe draws on a long-established discourse concerning the watery chaos beyond the limits of the known world. In this way, the text equates the cosmos as it is ordered by nature with the world as it is ordered by the Romans, with their genius for imposing stability on chaos — a talent exemplified in the story of how the Cloaca Maxima was built.
David J. Chalmers
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199289769
- eISBN:
- 9780191711046
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199289769.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics/Epistemology
In the Garden of Eden, we had unmediated contact with the world. We were directly acquainted with objects in the world and with their properties. Objects were simply presented to us without causal ...
More
In the Garden of Eden, we had unmediated contact with the world. We were directly acquainted with objects in the world and with their properties. Objects were simply presented to us without causal mediation, and properties were revealed to us in their true intrinsic glory. Eden was a world of perfect colour. But then there was a Fall. First, we ate from the Tree of Illusion. Second, we ate from the Tree of Science. We no longer live in Eden. Perhaps Eden never existed, and perhaps it could not have existed. But Eden still plays a powerful role in our perceptual experience of the world. At some level, perception represents our world as an Edenic one, populated by perfect colors and shapes, with objects and properties that are revealed to us directly. This chapter argues that even though we have fallen from Eden, Eden still acts as a sort of ideal that regulates the content of our perceptual experience.Less
In the Garden of Eden, we had unmediated contact with the world. We were directly acquainted with objects in the world and with their properties. Objects were simply presented to us without causal mediation, and properties were revealed to us in their true intrinsic glory. Eden was a world of perfect colour. But then there was a Fall. First, we ate from the Tree of Illusion. Second, we ate from the Tree of Science. We no longer live in Eden. Perhaps Eden never existed, and perhaps it could not have existed. But Eden still plays a powerful role in our perceptual experience of the world. At some level, perception represents our world as an Edenic one, populated by perfect colors and shapes, with objects and properties that are revealed to us directly. This chapter argues that even though we have fallen from Eden, Eden still acts as a sort of ideal that regulates the content of our perceptual experience.
Hannah Durkin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042621
- eISBN:
- 9780252051463
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042621.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
The conclusion summarizes the book’s key arguments. It reflects on the significance of Baker and Dunham’s memoirs and films in revealing the limitations of their roles as midcentury Black women ...
More
The conclusion summarizes the book’s key arguments. It reflects on the significance of Baker and Dunham’s memoirs and films in revealing the limitations of their roles as midcentury Black women artists and also their authorship despite such restrictions and their important contributions to literature and cinema. Baker and Dunham’s memoirs show how they each used dance to engage self-reflexively with pseudo-ethnographic tropes and to contest dehumanizing attitudes to Black Atlantic cultures and identities. Such texts reveal the origins of their antiracist philosophies and call attention to their international contributions to the civil rights and Black Arts movements. Equally, their screen careers expand our understanding of African American film history by revealing key moments of early Black female stardom and authorship beyond the realm of Hollywood.Less
The conclusion summarizes the book’s key arguments. It reflects on the significance of Baker and Dunham’s memoirs and films in revealing the limitations of their roles as midcentury Black women artists and also their authorship despite such restrictions and their important contributions to literature and cinema. Baker and Dunham’s memoirs show how they each used dance to engage self-reflexively with pseudo-ethnographic tropes and to contest dehumanizing attitudes to Black Atlantic cultures and identities. Such texts reveal the origins of their antiracist philosophies and call attention to their international contributions to the civil rights and Black Arts movements. Equally, their screen careers expand our understanding of African American film history by revealing key moments of early Black female stardom and authorship beyond the realm of Hollywood.
Marah Gubar
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195336252
- eISBN:
- 9780199868490
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336252.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book proposes a fundamental reconception of the 19th-century attitude toward the child. The Romantic ideology of innocence spread more slowly than we think, it contends, and the people whom we ...
More
This book proposes a fundamental reconception of the 19th-century attitude toward the child. The Romantic ideology of innocence spread more slowly than we think, it contends, and the people whom we assume were most committed to it—children’s authors and members of the infamous “cult of the child”—were actually deeply ambivalent. Writers such as Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and J. M. Barrie often resisted the growing cultural pressure to erect a strict barrier between child and adult, innocence and experience. Instead of urging young people to mold themselves to match a static ideal of artless simplicity, they frequently conceived of children as precociously literate, highly socialized beings who—though indisputably shaped by the strictures of civilized life—could nevertheless cope with such influences in creative ways. By entertaining the idea that contact with the adult world does not necessarily victimize children, these authors reacted against Dickensian plots which imply that youngsters who work and play alongside adults (including the so-called Artful Dodger) are not in fact inventive or ingenious enough to avoid a sad fate. To find the truly artful child characters from this era, the book maintains, we must turn to children’s literature, a genre that celebrates the canny resourcefulness of young protagonists without claiming that they enjoy unlimited power and autonomy.Less
This book proposes a fundamental reconception of the 19th-century attitude toward the child. The Romantic ideology of innocence spread more slowly than we think, it contends, and the people whom we assume were most committed to it—children’s authors and members of the infamous “cult of the child”—were actually deeply ambivalent. Writers such as Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and J. M. Barrie often resisted the growing cultural pressure to erect a strict barrier between child and adult, innocence and experience. Instead of urging young people to mold themselves to match a static ideal of artless simplicity, they frequently conceived of children as precociously literate, highly socialized beings who—though indisputably shaped by the strictures of civilized life—could nevertheless cope with such influences in creative ways. By entertaining the idea that contact with the adult world does not necessarily victimize children, these authors reacted against Dickensian plots which imply that youngsters who work and play alongside adults (including the so-called Artful Dodger) are not in fact inventive or ingenious enough to avoid a sad fate. To find the truly artful child characters from this era, the book maintains, we must turn to children’s literature, a genre that celebrates the canny resourcefulness of young protagonists without claiming that they enjoy unlimited power and autonomy.
Adam Pautz
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199556182
- eISBN:
- 9780191721014
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199556182.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter argues for primitivism about sensory consciousness. On primitivism, sensory consciousness cannot be fully reductively explained in physical or functional terms. The chapter's arguement ...
More
This chapter argues for primitivism about sensory consciousness. On primitivism, sensory consciousness cannot be fully reductively explained in physical or functional terms. The chapter's arguement for primitivism is not based on the usual a priori considerations, for instance the knowledge argument, the explanatory gap, or the thesis of revelation. Instead, the argument is based on a philosophical claim about the structure of consciousness together with an empirical claim about its physical basis.Less
This chapter argues for primitivism about sensory consciousness. On primitivism, sensory consciousness cannot be fully reductively explained in physical or functional terms. The chapter's arguement for primitivism is not based on the usual a priori considerations, for instance the knowledge argument, the explanatory gap, or the thesis of revelation. Instead, the argument is based on a philosophical claim about the structure of consciousness together with an empirical claim about its physical basis.
Ben Etherington
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781503602366
- eISBN:
- 9781503604094
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503602366.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book comprehensively redefines literary primitivism, arguing that it was an aesthetic project formed in reaction to the high point of imperialist expansion at the start of the twentieth century. ...
More
This book comprehensively redefines literary primitivism, arguing that it was an aesthetic project formed in reaction to the high point of imperialist expansion at the start of the twentieth century. As those spaces in which “primitive” forms of existence were imagined to be possible were either directly colonized or otherwise forcibly integrated into a geographically totalized capitalist world-system, so dissenting writers responded by trying to reawaken primitive experience by means of literary practice. This thesis breaks with the orthodox understanding of primitivism as a transhistorical tendency according to which the “civilized” idealize the “primitive,” something that is usually thought to correspond to a binary of the “West” and its “Others.” Adopting the “point of view of totality,” Literary Primitivism argues that it was artists from peripheral societies who most energetically pursued primitivism’s project of immediacy as it was they who most keenly felt the loss of unalienated social worlds. The major debates are reviewed concerning primitivism and the thinkers, artists, and concept--including expressionism, modernism, surrealism, Rousseau, Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Luxemburg, the writers of négritude, Carl Einstein, the Frankfurt School, and Alain Locke. In close studies of the work of Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, D. H. Lawrence, and Claude McKay the book identifies a morphology of literary primitivism that centers on the literary activation of the primitive remnant. Along the way, the book reassesses the politics of primitivism, especially with regard to its decolonial horizon, and the prospects for understanding literary primitivism as an event of world literature.Less
This book comprehensively redefines literary primitivism, arguing that it was an aesthetic project formed in reaction to the high point of imperialist expansion at the start of the twentieth century. As those spaces in which “primitive” forms of existence were imagined to be possible were either directly colonized or otherwise forcibly integrated into a geographically totalized capitalist world-system, so dissenting writers responded by trying to reawaken primitive experience by means of literary practice. This thesis breaks with the orthodox understanding of primitivism as a transhistorical tendency according to which the “civilized” idealize the “primitive,” something that is usually thought to correspond to a binary of the “West” and its “Others.” Adopting the “point of view of totality,” Literary Primitivism argues that it was artists from peripheral societies who most energetically pursued primitivism’s project of immediacy as it was they who most keenly felt the loss of unalienated social worlds. The major debates are reviewed concerning primitivism and the thinkers, artists, and concept--including expressionism, modernism, surrealism, Rousseau, Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Luxemburg, the writers of négritude, Carl Einstein, the Frankfurt School, and Alain Locke. In close studies of the work of Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, D. H. Lawrence, and Claude McKay the book identifies a morphology of literary primitivism that centers on the literary activation of the primitive remnant. Along the way, the book reassesses the politics of primitivism, especially with regard to its decolonial horizon, and the prospects for understanding literary primitivism as an event of world literature.
Ana Carden‐Coyne
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199546466
- eISBN:
- 9780191720659
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546466.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter discusses how the quest for civilization was renegotiated at a level of global peace discourse rather than national conflict. It explores the European and Anglophone context of ...
More
This chapter discusses how the quest for civilization was renegotiated at a level of global peace discourse rather than national conflict. It explores the European and Anglophone context of reconstruction, and examines how modernism and classicism were important cultural sources for rebuilding civilization. In war and peace, classical ideals of civilization were mobilized: the chapter examines these longer traditions and the impact of war. Classicism in the Academy is considered, especially classics and anthropology — disciplines that framed debates about civilization during the war and ideals of rebuilding afterwards. The impact on modernism is also explored, especially the affect of ‘cultural nostalgia’ on representations of the body. Together, classics, politics, and medicine set the context whereby classical ideals could be rejuvenating. The longer history of European classicism — and anxieties about civilization — provides important background for why, after 1918, physical perfection, social regeneration, and western cultural renewal were imagined through both the classical and the modern in reconstructing the body.Less
This chapter discusses how the quest for civilization was renegotiated at a level of global peace discourse rather than national conflict. It explores the European and Anglophone context of reconstruction, and examines how modernism and classicism were important cultural sources for rebuilding civilization. In war and peace, classical ideals of civilization were mobilized: the chapter examines these longer traditions and the impact of war. Classicism in the Academy is considered, especially classics and anthropology — disciplines that framed debates about civilization during the war and ideals of rebuilding afterwards. The impact on modernism is also explored, especially the affect of ‘cultural nostalgia’ on representations of the body. Together, classics, politics, and medicine set the context whereby classical ideals could be rejuvenating. The longer history of European classicism — and anxieties about civilization — provides important background for why, after 1918, physical perfection, social regeneration, and western cultural renewal were imagined through both the classical and the modern in reconstructing the body.
Rebecca Sanchez
- Published in print:
- 1979
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479828869
- eISBN:
- 9781479810628
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479828869.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter examines how the use of embodied language and history in storytelling cultures enables a productive reading of modernism’s interest in cultural memory that moves beyond accusations of ...
More
This chapter examines how the use of embodied language and history in storytelling cultures enables a productive reading of modernism’s interest in cultural memory that moves beyond accusations of primitivism to unpack both the ethics and pragmatics of this unexpected look to the past in the context of making it new. Drawing upon the history of early twentieth century Deaf boarding schools, it traces the development of communicative norms, which combine the growing interest in America in linguistic standardization with restrictive attitudes toward embodiment. The context of deaf educational practices reveals the force behind this push toward standardization, as well as providing a model that illuminates modernist discomfort over bodily signification in a variety of media, from the dance of Josephine Baker, to the films of Charles Chaplin. The work of both Chaplin and Sherwood Anderson, it argues, offer nuanced portraits of the pernicious effects of communicative norms and strategies for subverting them.Less
This chapter examines how the use of embodied language and history in storytelling cultures enables a productive reading of modernism’s interest in cultural memory that moves beyond accusations of primitivism to unpack both the ethics and pragmatics of this unexpected look to the past in the context of making it new. Drawing upon the history of early twentieth century Deaf boarding schools, it traces the development of communicative norms, which combine the growing interest in America in linguistic standardization with restrictive attitudes toward embodiment. The context of deaf educational practices reveals the force behind this push toward standardization, as well as providing a model that illuminates modernist discomfort over bodily signification in a variety of media, from the dance of Josephine Baker, to the films of Charles Chaplin. The work of both Chaplin and Sherwood Anderson, it argues, offer nuanced portraits of the pernicious effects of communicative norms and strategies for subverting them.
Jon Mee
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198183297
- eISBN:
- 9780191674013
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198183297.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 18th-century Literature
This chapter starts by saying that many of the prophetic features of William Blake's writings and designs discussed in the previous chapter have a double signification of origins which makes it ...
More
This chapter starts by saying that many of the prophetic features of William Blake's writings and designs discussed in the previous chapter have a double signification of origins which makes it difficult to ascribe them to a biblical model with complete certainty. The parabolical style of Blake's illuminated books draws not only on the Bible but also conforms in various ways to more general 18th-century conceptions of what primitive literature was supposed to be like. The chapter states that Blake's primitivism was part of a desire, widespread among radicals in the 1790s, to bring previously excluded currents into the public domain. The broader tendency represented the intensification into an explicitly political enterprise of the interest in the antique, exotic, and vulgar which typified the cultural production of the second half of the 18th century.Less
This chapter starts by saying that many of the prophetic features of William Blake's writings and designs discussed in the previous chapter have a double signification of origins which makes it difficult to ascribe them to a biblical model with complete certainty. The parabolical style of Blake's illuminated books draws not only on the Bible but also conforms in various ways to more general 18th-century conceptions of what primitive literature was supposed to be like. The chapter states that Blake's primitivism was part of a desire, widespread among radicals in the 1790s, to bring previously excluded currents into the public domain. The broader tendency represented the intensification into an explicitly political enterprise of the interest in the antique, exotic, and vulgar which typified the cultural production of the second half of the 18th century.
Terryl L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195375732
- eISBN:
- 9780199918300
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195375732.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
In Ohio, the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society (bank), part of a nationwide banking failure, fractured the church. Pratt’s wife Thankful Halsey died following the birth of Parley Pratt Jr. Very ...
More
In Ohio, the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society (bank), part of a nationwide banking failure, fractured the church. Pratt’s wife Thankful Halsey died following the birth of Parley Pratt Jr. Very soon after, he married Mary Ann Frost. Pressured by Joseph Smith on a loan, Pratt broke with the prophet. After reconciliation, he left on New York City mission. There he wrote his masterpiece, A Voice of Warning, influenced by Baconianism, millennialism, and his preference for biblical literalism over spiritualizing. Pratt elaborated a theology of Native Americans, and of restoration and authority more in line with Seekerism than Primitivism. In a pamphlet written in response to Methodist newspaper editor La Roy Sunderland, Pratt began to plumb deeper theology.Less
In Ohio, the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society (bank), part of a nationwide banking failure, fractured the church. Pratt’s wife Thankful Halsey died following the birth of Parley Pratt Jr. Very soon after, he married Mary Ann Frost. Pressured by Joseph Smith on a loan, Pratt broke with the prophet. After reconciliation, he left on New York City mission. There he wrote his masterpiece, A Voice of Warning, influenced by Baconianism, millennialism, and his preference for biblical literalism over spiritualizing. Pratt elaborated a theology of Native Americans, and of restoration and authority more in line with Seekerism than Primitivism. In a pamphlet written in response to Methodist newspaper editor La Roy Sunderland, Pratt began to plumb deeper theology.
Richard Greene
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198119883
- eISBN:
- 9780191671234
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198119883.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 18th-century Literature
The cult of the primitive in eighteenth-century England contributed substantially to the development of new attitudes towards originality, nature, and emotion in literature. Although the gap between ...
More
The cult of the primitive in eighteenth-century England contributed substantially to the development of new attitudes towards originality, nature, and emotion in literature. Although the gap between the primitivist theory and actual literary practice was great, it became possible through claims of natural genius for labouring-class poets to command the interest of readers and critics of a higher class. Such claims, of course, usually distorted and, in some cases, entirely misrepresented, the efforts of these poets. This chapter shows that Mary Leapor's education, though haphazard and incomplete, was considerably greater than was admitted at the time of her publication. To describe her as a primitive or a natural genius is a mistake.Less
The cult of the primitive in eighteenth-century England contributed substantially to the development of new attitudes towards originality, nature, and emotion in literature. Although the gap between the primitivist theory and actual literary practice was great, it became possible through claims of natural genius for labouring-class poets to command the interest of readers and critics of a higher class. Such claims, of course, usually distorted and, in some cases, entirely misrepresented, the efforts of these poets. This chapter shows that Mary Leapor's education, though haphazard and incomplete, was considerably greater than was admitted at the time of her publication. To describe her as a primitive or a natural genius is a mistake.
Kenneth K. Brandt
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780746312964
- eISBN:
- 9781789629156
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9780746312964.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Recounting his 1897-98 Klondike Gold Rush experience Jack London stated: “It was in the Klondike I found myself. There nobody talks. Everybody thinks. There you get your perspective. I got mine.” ...
More
Recounting his 1897-98 Klondike Gold Rush experience Jack London stated: “It was in the Klondike I found myself. There nobody talks. Everybody thinks. There you get your perspective. I got mine.” This study explores how London’s Northland odyssey - along with an insatiable intellectual curiosity, a hardscrabble youth in the San Francisco Bay Area, and an acute craving for social justice - launched the literary career of one of America’s most dynamic 20th-century writers. The major Northland works - including The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and “To Build a Fire”- are considered in connection with the motifs of literary Naturalism, as well as in relation to complicated issues involving imperialism, race, and gender. London’s key subjects—the frontier, the struggle for survival, and economic mobility—are examined in conjunction with how he developed the underlying themes of his work to engage and challenge the social, political, and philosophical revolutions of his era that were initiated by Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and others.Less
Recounting his 1897-98 Klondike Gold Rush experience Jack London stated: “It was in the Klondike I found myself. There nobody talks. Everybody thinks. There you get your perspective. I got mine.” This study explores how London’s Northland odyssey - along with an insatiable intellectual curiosity, a hardscrabble youth in the San Francisco Bay Area, and an acute craving for social justice - launched the literary career of one of America’s most dynamic 20th-century writers. The major Northland works - including The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and “To Build a Fire”- are considered in connection with the motifs of literary Naturalism, as well as in relation to complicated issues involving imperialism, race, and gender. London’s key subjects—the frontier, the struggle for survival, and economic mobility—are examined in conjunction with how he developed the underlying themes of his work to engage and challenge the social, political, and philosophical revolutions of his era that were initiated by Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and others.
George Molnar
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199204175
- eISBN:
- 9780191695537
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199204175.003.0013
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter examines some of the work powers can do. It concentrates on two areas, causation and modality, and attempts to direct others to complete the theories of powers. It provides various ...
More
This chapter examines some of the work powers can do. It concentrates on two areas, causation and modality, and attempts to direct others to complete the theories of powers. It provides various definitions for ‘cause’ and ‘causation’ and cites the contested characteristics of causation. It explains why effects are polygenic and why manifestations are not, and it differentiates between single-track and multi-track powers. It also offers two kinds of conceptions of the laws of nature: transcendent and immanent. Under modality, the chapter examines the differences between reductionism and eliminativism and suggests truth is a form of modal primitivism. It also contends that necessity is central to science and common sense, so someone is sure to try and make a philosophical living out of inverting this obvious truth.Less
This chapter examines some of the work powers can do. It concentrates on two areas, causation and modality, and attempts to direct others to complete the theories of powers. It provides various definitions for ‘cause’ and ‘causation’ and cites the contested characteristics of causation. It explains why effects are polygenic and why manifestations are not, and it differentiates between single-track and multi-track powers. It also offers two kinds of conceptions of the laws of nature: transcendent and immanent. Under modality, the chapter examines the differences between reductionism and eliminativism and suggests truth is a form of modal primitivism. It also contends that necessity is central to science and common sense, so someone is sure to try and make a philosophical living out of inverting this obvious truth.
Jimmy Casas Klausen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823257294
- eISBN:
- 9780823261512
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823257294.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Critics have claimed that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a primitivist who was uncritically preoccupied with “noble savages,” and that he remained oblivious to the African slave trade and so used ...
More
Critics have claimed that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a primitivist who was uncritically preoccupied with “noble savages,” and that he remained oblivious to the African slave trade and so used “slavery” and “freedom” callously. Fugitive Rousseau demonstrates why these charges are wrong and argues that a “fugitive” perspective on political freedom is bound up with the themes of primitivism and slavery in Rousseau’s political theory. Rather than tracing Rousseau’s arguments primarily to the social contract tradition of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, Fugitive Rousseau places Rousseau squarely in two imperial contexts: European empire in Rousseau’s Atlantic world and Roman imperial philosophy. Rousseauian political freedom cannot be understood without locating Rousseau’s figures of savages and slaves on the frontier of European expansion and colonization and in the Enlightenment reception of Stoic and Epicurean ideas on slavery and natural humanity. By placing empire front and center, Fugitive Rousseau thus shows how Rousseau’s work contributes to an international political theory and is thus not merely a theory of civic obligation and consent. Klausen critically examines Rousseau’s arguments on cosmopolitanism and nativism, developed in response to threats to freedom posed by European mobility and commerce, and pushes the cosmopolitan and nativist projects to their logical conclusions to reveal their limitations. Fugitive Rousseau then reconstructs an alternative Rousseauian conception, a fugitivefreedom, whereby a people constitutes itself, and affirms its freedom, in flight from domination.Less
Critics have claimed that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a primitivist who was uncritically preoccupied with “noble savages,” and that he remained oblivious to the African slave trade and so used “slavery” and “freedom” callously. Fugitive Rousseau demonstrates why these charges are wrong and argues that a “fugitive” perspective on political freedom is bound up with the themes of primitivism and slavery in Rousseau’s political theory. Rather than tracing Rousseau’s arguments primarily to the social contract tradition of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, Fugitive Rousseau places Rousseau squarely in two imperial contexts: European empire in Rousseau’s Atlantic world and Roman imperial philosophy. Rousseauian political freedom cannot be understood without locating Rousseau’s figures of savages and slaves on the frontier of European expansion and colonization and in the Enlightenment reception of Stoic and Epicurean ideas on slavery and natural humanity. By placing empire front and center, Fugitive Rousseau thus shows how Rousseau’s work contributes to an international political theory and is thus not merely a theory of civic obligation and consent. Klausen critically examines Rousseau’s arguments on cosmopolitanism and nativism, developed in response to threats to freedom posed by European mobility and commerce, and pushes the cosmopolitan and nativist projects to their logical conclusions to reveal their limitations. Fugitive Rousseau then reconstructs an alternative Rousseauian conception, a fugitivefreedom, whereby a people constitutes itself, and affirms its freedom, in flight from domination.
Paul Horwich
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198752233
- eISBN:
- 9780191597732
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198752237.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language
The book begins by noting that the sense of mystery surrounding truth stems from the fact that we insist on an answer to the question ‘What is truth?’, and are perplexed when no decent one can be ...
More
The book begins by noting that the sense of mystery surrounding truth stems from the fact that we insist on an answer to the question ‘What is truth?’, and are perplexed when no decent one can be found. But once the mundane generalizing function of this concept is appreciated, we can see that a reductive analysis of truth should never have been expected. The chapter continues with brief discussions of such theories (correspondence, coherence, pragmatist, and primitivist). It ends with a summary of the objections to minimalism that are addressed in subsequent chapters.Less
The book begins by noting that the sense of mystery surrounding truth stems from the fact that we insist on an answer to the question ‘What is truth?’, and are perplexed when no decent one can be found. But once the mundane generalizing function of this concept is appreciated, we can see that a reductive analysis of truth should never have been expected. The chapter continues with brief discussions of such theories (correspondence, coherence, pragmatist, and primitivist). It ends with a summary of the objections to minimalism that are addressed in subsequent chapters.
Sinéad Garrigan Mattar
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199268955
- eISBN:
- 9780191710148
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199268955.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The literature of the Irish Revival of the 1890s should be seen as a hinge between the 19th and 20th centuries. Its authors appropriated the ‘primitive’ through the lenses of comparative ...
More
The literature of the Irish Revival of the 1890s should be seen as a hinge between the 19th and 20th centuries. Its authors appropriated the ‘primitive’ through the lenses of comparative anthropology, mythology, and colonial travel-writing, and actively strove to re-establish contact with primitive modes through ‘the study of mythology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis’. They were engaged in a complex and volitional primitivism, which became ‘modernist’ as it utilised the findings of social science. The works of William Butler Yeats, John Millington Synge, and Lady Gregory are all analysed as the product of such influences. However, this book also suggests that Celticism itself underwent a sea-change during the 19th century, recreating itself in academic circles as an anti-primitivist science known as Celtology. It was only a matter of time before Yeats and Synge, who read widely in the works of Celtology, would look to this new science to find alternatives to the primitivism of the Twilight.Less
The literature of the Irish Revival of the 1890s should be seen as a hinge between the 19th and 20th centuries. Its authors appropriated the ‘primitive’ through the lenses of comparative anthropology, mythology, and colonial travel-writing, and actively strove to re-establish contact with primitive modes through ‘the study of mythology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis’. They were engaged in a complex and volitional primitivism, which became ‘modernist’ as it utilised the findings of social science. The works of William Butler Yeats, John Millington Synge, and Lady Gregory are all analysed as the product of such influences. However, this book also suggests that Celticism itself underwent a sea-change during the 19th century, recreating itself in academic circles as an anti-primitivist science known as Celtology. It was only a matter of time before Yeats and Synge, who read widely in the works of Celtology, would look to this new science to find alternatives to the primitivism of the Twilight.
