Adventures in the Archaic

"We tend to associate "primitivism" with the nostalgic idealization of origins, often aimed at parts of the world that are (problematically) viewed as "closer" to that idealized past than modern post-industrial society. "Primitivist" impulses still exist in popular culture, whether in "paleo" diets or returns to foraging, and they can also be seen in intellectual and political circles in debates around the possibility of "degrowth." In this book, historian Ryan Allen examines primitivism anew through four fascinating figures: Georges Bataille, Henri Lefebvre, Mircea Eliade, and Georges Devereux. In the postwar period, Allen shows, the French social sciences were obsessed with the primitive and archaic from anthropological, philosophical, psychiatric, or religious angles. These thinkers, in different ways, sought past alternatives to midcentury hyper-modernization and capitalist excess. They put forth trenchant critiques of contemporary society, and as Allen argues, they sought in the archaic past a way to imagine a more sustainable future. Allen seeks to rehabilitate these thinkers, showing how their critique of growth and consumerism was nourished by an engagement with primitive cultures as potential sources of cultural and ecological wisdom. As we face planetary disaster, Allen suggests, there is still something to learn from these iconoclastic approaches"--