The term ‘primitivism’ is typically used in two distinct but related senses. First of all, it designates a sentimental approach to archaic and pre-industrial cultures. However, this seemingly sympathetic perspective in fact contains not only a weiled contempt for the simple-minded ‘primitive’ but also a demeaning colonialist or neo-colonialist program of subjugation and exploitation: the primitive is a child who requires parental (i.e., colonialist) supervision. Seen from this perspective, the primitive can only be an anachronism, who embodies what ‘advanced’ Western civilization has left behind. As Marx said of the Homeric epics, primitive cultures represent ‘the childhood of humanity.’ However appealing they may seem, they exist at a ‘lower’ stage of development and represent a species of barbarism that the civilizing mission of the West has a duty to raise to a ‘higher’ plane. … …
But if the primitive frequently represents the secretly despised Other for the modern Westerner, there is second version of primitivism which sees that Other as Us, or rather, in Us. In this idealizing version of primitivism the primitive is seen as holding the key to the modern Westerner’s deepest sense of identity: the primitive becomes a symbol of the unconscious psychic core, the primordial self covered over by layers of civilization. The primitive in us is more authentic, more in contact with the wellsprings of life. … …
The modern primitivist fantasy of identification with the primitive runs deep in the modern psyche, where it plays a compensatory role of major proportions. It compensates for the stresses of the industrial and corporate workplace, for the destruction of the natural world, for the loss of small-scale community life, and for the loss of leisure and the spirit of playfulness. Whether embodied in the Native American warrior, the Stone Age cave dweller, or the African witch doctor, the consoling fantasy of the primitive plays counterpoint to the problems of modern civilization. This idealizing version of primitivism might appear to be some new version of pastoral–with the modern Westerner happily playing at primitive, just as Marie Antoinette once played at shepherdess. But one should be careful not to dismiss it out of hand as pure fantasy, as ‘myth’ not ‘reality’, for fantasies and myths contain significant compensatory images that can enlighten and enrich cultural consciousness.
These two versions of primitivism–the sentimental and the idealizing–may coexist in the Western mind without arousing any sense of their contradictoriness.
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On this point, I should like to mention, merely as a general and hypothetical suggestion, the possibility that the work of Balzac–whose structure ought, indeed, to be analysed from this point of view–might constitute the only great literary expression of the world as structured by the conscious values of the bourgeoisie: individualism, the thirst for power, money, and eroticism, which triumph over the ancient feudal values of altruism, charity, and love.
Lucien Goldmann Towards A Sociology of the Novel, p.14