The Neo-Primitivist Turn: Critical Reflections on Alterity, Culture, and Modernity by Victor Li
Bibliographic record
Abstract
MLR, 103. I, 2008 I77 The Neo-Primitivist Turn: Critical Reflections onAlterity, Culture, andModernity. By VICTOR Li. Toronto: University ofToronto Press. 2oo6. Xii+ 292 pp. $50. ISBN 978-O-8020-9 I I I-6. There is something charming in this scrupulous study of postmodern thinkers, as when Victor Li says that 'to claim [. . .] that "modernity" is not opposed to,but is in league with, neo-primitivism, will come as a shock tomost readers' (p. I53). The threshold of shock has been placed very low.At this point in the argument Li is discussing Habermas, in a chapter of nice lucidity, with interest for readers of decon struction, since the argument is thatHabermas cannot quite deliver on his desire to complete modernity, since he requires an attention to the 'primitive' which he can neither place in thepast nor eject from thatdiscourse ofmodernity. Li argues that nineteenth-century anthropology (E. B. Tylor) used the language of progress (going from 'primitive' to civilized); thiswas replaced by amodernist attention to the 'primitive', seeing itas critiquing modernity. This tradition findsam biguous expression inLevi-Strauss, whose Tristes tropiques( 95 5) isbetween wanting to finda 'point zero' which would allow forthe idea of an originary society-Li draws on Blanchot's review ofLevi-Strauss inL'Amitie (Paris: Gallimard, I97 i)-and see ing 'primitive society' as a construct, necessary tojudge present society.Li argues that a 'neo-primitivist' turn has taken place in the 'anti-primitivist' spirit of postmoder nity, dating this to an exhibition atMOMA inNew York in I984, 'Primitivism in 20th Century Art: Affinityof theTribal and the Modern', which according toGeorge Marcus and Michael Fischer, in theirAnthropology and Social Critique (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, I986), showed that 'primitivism' had been assimilated into Western art history, a view contested byHal Foster inRecodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (Port Townsend: Bay Press, I985), which is thus placed at thebegin ning of neo-primitivism. Primitivism isquestioned for itsadherence to aEurocentric universalism that fetishistically recognizes and disavows primitive difference; but in itsplace a neo-primitivism is installed thatguards theprimitiveOther fromdialectical appropriation. Neo-primitivism 'emphasises absolute difference, or radical alterity' (p. i8). The question besetting study of thisneo-primitivism iswhether recognition of such alterity is a formof cultural imperialism; whether recognition of theother is not, inRobert Bernasconi's words in relation toLevinas, 'theultimate wisdom ofEur ope' (quoted p. 20). The issue ispursued via Spivak on the 'subaltern', Baudrillard, Lyotard, andMarianna Torgovnick, whose Gone Primitive (Chicago: Chicago Uni versity Press, I990) and Primitive Passions (New York: Knopf, I997) look for a fe minine primitivism. This section discusses Levi-Strauss and Derrida's opposition, commenting nicely on 'New Age' commercialism and the 'contradictory attempt to achieve collective consciousness or oceanic impersonality while still attached to "a thoroughlymodern world view that takes the self as a thing to be owned, cultivated, and coddled-the veritable hub of theuniverse"' (Primitive Passions, quoted p. 8o). Another section, discussing Marshall Sahlins's critique of universalist tendencies in Western theory,argues that Sahlins is caught in the aporia of needing to use the non-Western while defending itsalterity,unable to do without itssupport in the an thropological discipline. This problem-requiring the other while also wanting the other tobe theother-extends toHabermas; here the analysis, drawing on Agamben, concludes thatHabermas, likeothers, still requires the primitive to test themodern world-picture, and must maintain the concept of the primitive while criticizing the discourses thatbrought it into play.Concluding, Li says thathis criticisms have been 'severe' (p. 222), but theyhave been, rather, thoughtful and provocative. UNIVERSITY OFMANCHESTER JEREMY TAMBLING ...
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".