The Primitive Unconscious of Modern Art

The "Primitive" Unconscious of Modern Art
Author(s): Hal Foster

Source: October, Vol. 34 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 45-70
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778488
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The "Primitive"Unconscious of
Modern Art
HAL FOSTER
At once eccentricand crucial, Les Demoiselles

d'Avignon
(1907) is the set piece
of the Museum of Modern Art: a bridge between modernistand premodernist
painting, a primal scene of modern primitivism.In this paintinga step outside
the traditionis said to coincide with a leap within it. Yet one wonders if this
aestheticbreakthroughis not also a breakdown, psychologicallyregressive,politicallyreactionary.The paintingpresentsan encounterin which are inscribed
two scenes: the depicted one of the brothel and the projected one of the heralded 1907 visit of Picasso to the collection of tribal artifactsin the Muse
d'Ethnographiedu Trocadero. This double encounter is tellinglysituated: the
prostitutesin the bordello, the Africanmasks in the Trocadero, both disposed
forrecognition,foruse.1 Figured here, to be sure, are both fear and desire of
the other,2but is it not desire formasteryand fear of its frustration?
In projectingthe primitiveonto woman as other, Demoisellesless resolves
than is riven by the threatto male subjectivity,displayingits own decentering
along with its defense. For in some sense Picasso did intuit one apotropaic
functionof tribal objects- and adopted them as such, as "weapons":
They were against everything- against unknownthreateningspirits.
... I, too, I am against everything.I, too, believe thateverythingis
unknown, thateverythingis an enemy! ... women, children... the
1.
As is well known, an early study included two customers of the demoiselles, a medical student and a sailor, and was thus distanced as a narrative; with these surrogates removed, the
painting becomes a direct address to its masculine subject. As forthe Trocadero, Western man,
its source of projection, is absent fromit: "What was not displayed in the Musee de 1'Homme was
the modern West, its art, institutions,and techniques. Thus the orders of the West were everywhere present in the Musee de l'Homme, except on display." (James Clifford,"On Ethnographic
Studiesin Societyand History,vol. 23, no. 4 [1981], p. 561).
Surrealism," Comparative
See William Rubin, "Picasso," in "Primitivism"
2.
in 20th Century
Art.:AfinityoftheTribaland the
Modern,ed. Rubin, New York, MOMA, 1984, pp. 252-254. Hilton Kramer, who celebrates the
abilityof bourgeois culture to negate the primitive"assault," findsthis importantconnection between primitivismand "fear of women" "trivializing"("The 'Primitive' Conundrum," The New
Criterion
[December 1984], p. 5).
46
OCTOBER
whole of it! I understoodwhat the Negroes used theirsculpturesfor.

S.. All fetishes... were weapons. To help people avoid coming under the influenceof spiritsagain, to help them become independent.
Spirits,the unconscious ... theyare all the same thing.I understood
why I was a painter. All alone in thatawful museum withthe masks
. . . the dusty mannikins. Les Demoisellesd'Avignon
must have been
born thatday, but not at all because of the forms;because it was my
firstexorcism painting- yes absolutely!3
Apart froma (bombastic) avant-gardism,Picasso conveys the shock of thisencounteras well as the euphoria ofhis solution,an extraordinarypsycho-aesthetic
move by which othernesswas used to ward away others (woman, death, the
primitive)and by which, finally,a crisis in phallocentricculture was turned
into one of its great monuments.
If, in the Demoiselles,Picasso transgresses,he does so in order to mediate
the primitivein the name of the West (and it is in part forthis that he remains
thehero of MOMA's narrativeofthe triumphof modernart). In thisregard,the
is indeed a primal scene of primitivism,one in which the structured
Demoiselles
relationof narcissismand aggressivityis revealed. Such confrontationalidentificationis peculiar to the Lacanian imaginary,the realm to which the subject
returnswhen confrontedwiththe threatof difference.4Here, then, primitivism
discourse, a recognitionand disavowal not only of primemerges as a fetishistic
itive differencebut of the fact that the West - its patriarchal subjectivityand
socius- is threatenedby loss, by lack, by others.
was also the set piece of the recent MOMA exhiLes Demoiselles
d'Avignon
in 20th Century
bition-cum-book "Primitivism"
Art: Affnity
of the Tribal and the
Modern,5in which the painting was presented, along with Africanmasks often
proposed as sources forthe demoiselles, in such a way as to support the curain art. (The argumentruns that Picasso
torial case fora modern/tribalaffinity
could not have seen these masks, thatthe paintingmanifestsan intuitiveprimitivityor "savage mind.") This presentationwas typicalof the abstractiveoperation of the show, premised as it was on the belief that "modernistprimitivism
depends on the autonomous forceof objects" and that its complexitiescan be
revealed "in purely visual terms, simplyby the juxtaposition of knowinglyse3.
Quoted in Andre Malraux, Picasso'sMask, trans. June and Jacques Guicharnaud, New
York, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1976, pp. 10-11.
4.
My discussion of primitivismas a fetishisticcolonial discourse is indebted to Homi K.
Bhabha, "The Other Question," Screen,vol. 24, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1983), pp. 18-36.
5.
The show, sponsored by Philip Morris, Inc., included some 150 modern and 200 tribal
works, most oftenset in pairs or comparative ensembles. Curated by William Rubin, Director of
the Department of Painting and Sculpture, in collaboration with Kirk Varnedoe of the Institute
of Fine Arts, it claimed to be "the firstexhibition to juxtapose tribal and modern objects in the
lightof informedart history."MOMA also published a two-volume catalogue with nineteen essays by sixteen scholars on diverse aspects of "primitivism."
Unconscious
The "Primitive"
ofModernArt
47
lected worksof art."6Though the exhibitiondid qualifythe debased art-historical

notion of causal influence(e.g., of the tribal on the modern), and did on anotherfrontdemolish the more debased racist model of an evolutionistprimitivism, it did so oftenonly to replace the firstwith "affinity"
(in the formof the
and the second withthe emptyuniversal,"human creativfamilyof homoartifex)
ity whereverfound."7
Based on the aestheticconcerns of the modern artists,8the "Primitivism"
show cannot be condemned on ethnologicalgrounds alone. Too oftenthe contextualistrebuke is facile, a compensatoryexpression of a liberal-humanistremorse forwhat cannot be restored. It is, afterall, the vocation of the modern
art museum to decontextualize. (Levi-Strauss describes anthropologyas a techhow much more is thistrueof art history?)And in the case
niquedu dipaysement:9
of the tribal objects on display, the museum is but one finalstage in a series of
abstractions,of power-knowledgeplays that constituteprimitivism.Yet to acknowledge decontextualizationis one thing,to produce ideas with it another.
For it is this absolution of (con)textual meanings and ideological problems in
of formthat allowed forthe humanist presuppositionsof the
the self-sufficiency
show (that the finalcriterionis Form, the only contextArt, the primarysubject
Man). In thisway the show confirmedthe colonial extractionof the tribalwork
(in the guise of its redemptionas art) and rehearsed its artisticappropriation
into tradition.10No counterdiscoursewas posed: the imperialistpreconditionof
primitivismwas suppressed, and "primitivism,"a metonym of imperialism,
served as its disavowal.
This abstractionof the tribal is only half the story;no less essential to the
was the decontextualizationof the modern work.
productionof affinity-effects
It, too, appeared withoutindices of its contextualmediations(i.e., the dialectic
of avant-garde,kitsch,and academy by whichitis structured:it is, incidentally,
the excision of thisdialectic that allows forthe formal-historicist
model of modernismin the firstplace). The modern objects on view, most ofwhich are preoccupied by a primitivistformand/or"look,"alone representedthe way the primitive is thought.Which is to say that the modern/tribalencounterwas mapped
- in
in mostlypositivistterms(the surfacesof influence,the formsof affinity)
termsof morphologicalcoincidence, not conceptual displacement. (The "trans6.
Kirk Varnedoe, "Preface," in "Primitivism,"
p. x.
7.
Ibid.
8.
On the one hand, this is a legitimaterestriction:to focus on the "appreciation"of tribal art
by modern artists,who "generally did not know its sources or purposes" (exhibition pamphlet).
On the other hand, it is a curatorial alibi that obscures the ideology of primitivism.
9.
Claude Levi-Strauss, "Archaism in Anthropology,"in Structural
Anthropology
(Vol. 1), trans.
Claire Jacobson, New York, Basic Books, 1963, p. 117.
10. "We owe to the voyagers, colonials, and ethnologiststhe arrival of these objects in the
West. But we owe primarilyto the convictionsof the pioneer modern artiststheirpromotionfrom
the rank of curiositiesand artifactsto that of major art, indeed to the status of art at all" (Rubin,
"Modernist Primitivism:An Introduction,"in "Primitivism,"
p. 7).
'\...
MO.
:gg
rgg
rI
::
i'44
mask.Pende.Zaire.
Mbuya(sickness)
PabloPicasso.Les Demoisellesd'Avignon.1907.
gressivity"of the encounterwas largelydisregarded,perhaps because it cannot

be so readilyseen.)In thisway, the show abstractedand separated the modern
and the tribal into two sets of objects that could then only be "affined."Thus
reduced to form,it is no wonder theycame to reflectone anotherin the glass of
the vitrines,and one is temptedto ask, cynicallyenough, aftersuch a double
abstraction,such a double tropismtoward modern (en)light(enment),what is
was discovery(of
What part of this hypothesis-turned-show
leftbut "affinity"?
and
what
and
the
innate
transculturalforms,
structures,
part (modernist)
like)
invention?
or
ElectiveAffinities,
Impressions
(et d'Oceanie)
d'Afrique
For William Rubin, directorof the "Primitivism"show, the idea of "elecbetween the tribal and the modern arises fromtwo oracular protive affinity"
nouncementsof Picasso: one to the effectthatthisrelationshipis similarto that
between the Renaissance and antiquity; the other that his own tribal objects
were "morewitnessesthan models"11of his art. Innocuous enough, these state11.
Quoted by Rubin, "Introduction,"p. 17.
Unconscious
The "Primitive"
ofModernArt
49
ments neverthelesssuggest the way primitivismis conceived as absorbing the

primitive,in part via the concept of affinity.The renaissance of antiquityis an
intra-Westernevent, the verydiscoveryof a Westernness: to pose it as an analto inscribethe tribalas modern-primitivist,
to deny itsdifogy is almost ipsofacto
ference.Moreover, the analogy implies thatthe modern and the tribal,like the
Renaissance and antiquity,are affinedin the search for"fundaments."Argued
particularlyby codirectorKirk Varnedoe,12thispositiontends to cast the primitiveas primaland to elide the different
ways in whichthefundamentalis thought.
The second Picasso testimonial,thatthe tribalobjects were witnessesonly, sets
Yet, ifnot directsources,
up in the disavowal of influencethe notion of affinity.
"the Negro pieces" were not, on account of this, mere secretsharers: theywere
use.
seen, as Picasso remarkedto Malraux, as "mediators,"13thatis, asformsfor
If the Renaissance analogy poses the tribal as falselyfamilial,here recognition
is contingentupon instrumentality.In this way, throughaffinity
and use, the
is
sent
into
the
service
of
the
Western
tradition
primitive
up
(which is then seen
to have partlyproduced it).
The exhibition commenced with displays of certain modernist involvements with tribal art: interest,resemblance, influence,and affinityproper-usually of a roughlyanalogous structureand/or conception.'4 In the inspired
pairing of the Picasso constructionGuitar(1912) and a Grebo mask owned by
him, Rubin argues thatthe projectiveeyes of the mask allowed Picasso to think
the hole ofthe guitaras a cylinder,and thus to use space as form,a surrogateas
sign (a discoveryprolepticof syntheticcubism). Such affinity,
"conceptual ideographic,"" not merelyformal,is argued in thejuxtaposition of a Picasso painting (Head, 1928) of superimposed profiles(?) and a Yam mask with the same
element foreyes, nose, and mouth. In both works the "features"appear more
arbitrarythan naturallymotivated. The two do share an ideographic relation
to the object, and it is true that different
signifiedsmay be informedby similar
signifiers.But the worksare affinedmostlyby virtueof the factthat theydiffer
fromanother (Western "realist") paradigm,16 and the arbitrarinessof the sign
(at least in the case of the tribal object) is largely due to its abstractionfrom
its code.
Otherwise, the affinitiesproposed in the show were mostlymorphological
- or were treatedas such even when theyappeared metaphoricalor semiological (as in certain surrealisttransformationswrung by Picasso). These formally
See in particular his essay on Gauguin in "Primitivism,"

12.
pp. 179-209.
13. Quoted in Malraux, p. 10.
14.
To claim affinity,the curators must disprove influence or direct contact- an "argument
from silence," which, as others have pointed out, is difficultto make.
15.
Rubin, "Introduction,"p. 25.
16.
See James Clifford,"Histories of the Tribal and the Modern," Artin America(April 1985),
p. 166.
-:?
:1?:
?:-
":"
:::-:::::,
i..
~
Mask. Grebo.
IvoryCoastorLiberia.
-:i
PabloPicasso.Guitar.1912.
coincidentalaffinitiesseemed to be derived in equal part fromthe formalistreception of the primitiveread back into the tribalworkand fromthe radical abstractionperformedon both sets of objects. This productionof affinity
through
projectionand abstractionwas exposed most dramaticallyin thejuxtaposition
of a painted Oceanic wood figureand a Kenneth Noland targetpainting(Tondo,
1961), a workwhich,in its criticalcontextat least, is preciselynot about the anthropomorphicand asks not to be read iconographically.What does this pairis
ing tell us about "universals"?- that the circle is such a form,or thataffinity
the effectof an erasure of difference.Here, universalityis indeed circular,the
specular image of the modern seen in the mask of the tribal.
the show dismissedthe primitivist
misreadingpar excellence:
Significantly,
thattribalart is intrinsicallyexpressionisticor even psychologicallyexpressive,
when it is in factritualistic,apotropaic, decorative, therapeutic,and so forth.
But it failed to question other extrapolationsfromone set of objects, one cultural context,to the other: to question what is at stake ideologicallywhen the
"magical" characterof tribal work is read (especially by Picasso) into modern
art, or when modern values of intentionality,originality,and aestheticfeeling
?iii
i:-:::
::?
":::
-I::
iii::
-:
i
i,i:
.. . ? ..!i::i
?
::.
iii :
~:?
iii
i:
!:'
ii,::
:
iii:
:':iii::iiiiiiii
ii:
:::
1 ;iiiiiiiii
ii ::i~
Mask. Tusyan.UpperVolta.
Max Ernst.Bird Head. 1934-35.
are bestowed upon tribalobjects." In both instancesdifferent

ordersof the socius and the subject, of the economy of the object, and of the place of the artist
are transposedwithviolence; and the resultthreatensto turnthe primitiveinto
a specular Western code wherebydifferent
ordersof tribalcultureare made to
conformto one Westerntypology.(That themodernworkcan reveal properties
in the tribal is not necessarilyevolutionist,but it does tend to pose the two as
different
stages and thusto encompass thetribalwithinour privilegedhistorical
consciousness.)'8
17. The "tribal artists" are also called "problem-solving"(Rubin, "Introduction," p. 25).
Though this term imputes an almost formalistorientation,it also suggests a possible "affinity"of art and artifactas an imaginaryresolutionof social contradiction.This definitionleads one to
wonder what contradictionmodernist"primitivism"resolves.
18. "Bourgeois society is the most developed and the most complex historicorganization of
production. The categorieswhich express its relation, the comprehensionof its structure,thereby
allow insightsinto the structureand relation of production of all the vanished social formations
out of whose ruins and elements it built itselfup, whose partly still unconquered remnants are
carried along with it, whose mere nuances have developed explicit significancewith it, etc. Human anatomy contains a key to the anatomy of the ape. The intimationsof higherdevelopment
among the subordinate species, however, can be understood only afterthe higherdevelopment is
trans. M. Nicolaus, London, Pelican, 1973, p. 105).
already known" (Karl Marx, Grundrisse,
52
OCTOBER
No less than the formalabstractionof the tribal, this specular code of the
For what do we behold here: a universality
primitiveproduces affinity-effects.'9
of formor an otherrenderedin our own image, an affinity
withour own imagiof
the
terms
nary primitive?Though properly wary
primitiveand tribal,the
firstbecause of its Darwinist associations, the second because of itshypothetical
nature, the curatorsused both as "conventionalcounters"20- but it is precisely
this conventionalitythat is in question. Rubin distinguishedprimitivestyle
fromarchaic (e.g., Iberian, Egyptian, Mesoamerican) diacritically
in relationto
the West. The primitiveis said to pertain to a "tribal"socius with communal
formsand the archaic to a "court"civilizationwithstatic,hieratic,monumental
art. This definition,which excludes as much as it includes, seems to specifythe
but in factsuspends it. Neither"dead" like the archaic nor "hisprimitive/tribal
torical,"the primitiveis cast into a nebulous past and/orinto an idealist realm
of"primitive"essences. (Thus the tribalobjects, not dated in the show, are still
not entirelyfreeof the old evolutionistassociation with primal or ancient artifacts,a confusionentertainedby the moderns.) In thisway, the primitive/tribal
is set adriftfromspecificreferentsand coordinates- which thus allows it to be
definedin whollyWestern terms.And one begins to see thatone of the preconditions, if not of primitivism,then certainlyof the "Primitivism"show, is the
mummificationof the tribal and the museumificationof its objects (which vital
cultures like the Zuni have specificallyprotestedagainst).
The foundingact of thisrecodingis the repositioningofthe tribalobject as
art. Posed against its use firstas evolutionisttrophyand then as ethnographic
evidence, this aestheticizationallows the work to be both decontextualizedand
of the primitiveamong the moderns- its curcommodified. It is this currency
circulation
as
as
its
commodity- that allows forthe modern/tribal
rency sign,
in
The
the
first
"Primitivism"show exhibitedthiscurrency
place.
affinity-effect
but did not theorize it. Moreover, it no more "corrected"this primitivistcode
than it did the officialformalistmodel of modernism. This code was already
partlyin place by the time of the MOMA "AfricanNegro Art" show in 1935,
when James Johnson Sweeney wrote against its undue "historicaland ethnographic" reception: "It is as sculpture we should approach it."21 Apart from
anti-Darwinistmotives,the imperativehere was to confirmthe formalistreading
and newfoundvalue of the Africanobjects. With the Africancast as a specifibestowed
cally plastic art, the counterterm- a pictorialart- was institutionally
1946
of
the
South
the
MOMA
exhibition
"Arts
work
Oceanic
Seas,"
by
upon
19. "Affinity"
seems at once a cultural concept and a natural (or at least transcultural)property
- a logical scandal, as LUvi-Strausssaid of the incest prohibition.But just as Derrida argued that
Levi-Strauss's "scandal" was an effect
of his own structuralistsystem, so mightthe modern/tribal
be an effectof its formalistpresentationat MOMA.
"affinity"
20.
See Rubin, "Introduction,"p. 74.
21. James Johnson Sweeney, AfricanNegroArt, New York, MOMA, 1935, p. 21.
Unconscious
The "Primitive"
ofModernArt
53
directedby Rene d'Harnoncourt. Althoughthis exhibitiondid not mentionthe

in the art with the "dreamworldand
surrealistsdirectly,it noted an "affinity"
subconscious."22It then remained forAlfredBarr (in a 1950 letterto the College
ArtJournal) to historicizethis purely diacritical, purely Western systemas a
"discovery":
It is worthnoting,briefly,the two great waves of discovery:the first
mightbe called cubist-expressionist.This was concerned primarily
with formal,plastic and emotional values of a directkind. The second wave, quasi-surrealist,was more preoccupied with the fantastic
and imaginative values of primitiveart.23
The "Primitivism"show only extended this code, structuredas it was
around a "Wolffliniangeneralization""24
of Africantactility(sculptural, iconic,
monochromatic,geometric)versus Oceanic visuality(pictorial, narrative,colorful, curvilinear), the firstrelated to ritual, the second to myth,with ritual,
Rubin writes,"more inherently'abstract' than myth. Thus, the more ritually
orientedAfricanworkwould again appeal to the Cubist, while the more mythic
content of the Oceanic/American work would engage the Surrealist."25This
aestheticcode is only part of a cultural systemof paired terms,both withinthe
primitive(e.g., maleficAfrica versus paradisal Oceania) and withinprimitivism (e.g., noble or savage or vital primitiveversus corruptor civilized or ennervated Westerner), to which we will return. Sufficeit to say here that the
tribal/modernaffinity
is largelythe effectof a decoding of the tribal(a "deterriin
the
Deleuzian
torializing"
sense) and a recoding in specular modern terms.
As with most formalor even structuralapproaches, the referent(the tribal socius) tends to be bracketed, if not banished, and the historical(the imperialist
condition of possibility)disavowed.26
Essentially, the OED distinguishesthreekinds of "affinity":
resemblance,
kinship, and spiritualor chemical attraction("elective affinity").As suggested,
in the show, mostlyof the firstorder,were used to connoteaffinities
the affinities
of the second order: an optical illusion induced the mirage of the (modernist)
Family of Art. However progressivethis may once have been, this election to
ourhumanity can now be seen as thoroughlyideological, for if evolutionism
subordinatedthe primitiveto Westernhistory,affinity-ism
recoups it under the
sign of Western universality.("Humanity," Levi-Strauss suggests,is a modern
22.
Rene d'Harnoncourt, preface to Artsof theSouthSeas, New York, MOMA, 1946.
23.
Alfred H. Barr, Jr., letter in CollegeArtJournal,vol. 10, no. 1 (1950), p. 59.
24.
Rubin, "Introduction,"p. 47.
25.
Ibid., p. 55.
The process is strangelyreminiscentof Impressions
26.
ofAfricain which, by a code of his own,
Raymond Roussel produces an "Africa"which totallyoccludes Africa- but neverthelessmakes us
aware of Western mythsof Africa as he does so.
54
OCTOBER
Western concept.)27 In this recognitiondifferenceis discovered only to be fetishisticallydisavowed, and in the celebrationof"human creativity"the dissolution of specificculturesis carried out: the Museum of Modern Art played host
to the Musee de l'Homme indeed.
MOMAism
MOMA has long served as an American metonymof modern art, with
the historyof the one oftenchartedin termsof the space of the other. This mapreading ofmodernism
ping has in turnsupporteda "historical-transcendental"28
as a "dialectic" or deductive line of formal innovations within the tradition.
Now in the decay of thismodel the museum has become open to charges that it
repressespolitical and/ortransgressiveart (e.g., productivism,dada), that it is
indifferent
to contemporarywork(or able to engage it only when, as in the "InternationalSurvey of Recent Painting and Sculpture,"it conformsto its traditional categories), that it is a period piece, and so on. In this situation, the
"Primitivism"show could not but be overdetermined,especially when billed as
a "significantcorrectionof the received historyof modern art."29What history
was correctedhere, and in the name of what present?What would be the stake,
forexample, if MOMA had presented a show of the modern encounter with
mass-culturalproductsratherthan tribalobjects? Could it map such a toposand
not violate its formal-historicist
premises? Could the museum absorb art that
modernist
official
paradigms as well as institutionalmedia apparachallenges
tuses as it incorporatedprimitivistart? More important,did MOMA in fact
pose a new model of modernismhere, one based not on transformationwithin
but on transgressionwithout- an engagementwithan outside (tribaltraditions,
popular cultures) that mightdisrupt the order of Western art and thought?
The conflictedrelationof"Primitivism"to the modern and the presentwas
evident in its contradictorypoint of view. At once immanentand transcendent,
the show both rehearsed the modern recepand demystificatory,
mystificatory
between the two "from
tion of the tribal"fromthe inside"and posited an affinity
above." It reproduced some modern (mis)readings (e.g., the formal,oneiric,
"magical"), exposed others(e.g., the expressionist),only to impose ones of its
See Levi-Strauss, "Race and History," in Structural
27.
Anthropology
(Vol. 2), trans. Monique
Layton, Chicago, Universityof Chicago Press, 1976, p. 329.
"The historical-transcendentalrecourse: an attemptto find,beyond all historicalmanifes28.
tation and historical origin, a primary foundation, the opening of an inexhaustible horizon, a
plan which would move backward in time in relation to every event, and which would maintain
throughouthistorythe constantlyunwinding plan of an unending unity"(Michel Foucault, "History, Discourse, and Discontinuity,"Salmagundi20 [Summer/Fall 1972], p. 227).
29.
Rubin, "Introduction,"p. 71. The exclusion of neo-expressionismfromthe contemporary
section of the show appears almost as a disavowal of one of its subtexts. The work in this section,
though not traditionalin medium, is so in the way it fashions"theprimitive"as an ahistoricalprocess or as a primitivisticlook.
Unconscious
The "Primitive"
ofModernArt
55
own (the intentional,original, "aesthetic,"problem-solving).The status of its

objects was also ambiguous. Though presented as art, the tribal objects are
manifestlythe ruins of(mostly) dead culturesnow exposed to our archeological
probes- and so tooare themodern
objects,despite the agenda to "correct"the institutionalreading of the modern (to keep it alive via some essential, eternal
"primitivism"?).Against its own intentions,the show signaled a potentially
postmodern, post-tribalpresent; indeed, in the technological vacuum of the
museum space, this present seemed all but posthistorical.
But the exhibitiondid more than mark our distance fromthe modern and
tribalobjects; it also revealed the epistemologicallimitsofthe museum. How to
representthe modern/tribalencounteradequately? How to map the intertextuality of this event? Rather than abstractlyaffineobjects point by point, how to
trace the mediationsthatdivide and conjoin each term?If primitivismis in part
an aestheticconstruct,how to display its historicalconditions?In its verylack,
the show suggested the need of a Foucauldian archeologyof primitivism,one
which, ratherthan speak froman academic "postcolonial"place, mighttake its
own colonialist condition of possibilityas its object. Such an enterprise,however, is beyond the museum, the business ofwhich is patronage- theformation
of a paternal traditionagainst the transgressiveoutside, a documentation of
civilization,not the barbarism underneath. In neitherits epistemologicalspace
nor its ideological historycan MOMA in particular engage these disruptive
terms. Instead it recoups the outside dialectically- as a momentin itsown history--and transformsthetransgressiveintocontinuity.With thisshow MOMA
may have moved to revise its formal(ist)model of the modern now adjudged
(even by it?) to be inadequate, but it did so only to incorporatethe outside in its
originary(modern) moment as primitivism.Meanwhile, except forthe token,
misconstruedpresence of Robert Smithson (and perhaps Joseph Beuys), the
transgressivein its transfigured(contemporary)momentin all its disruptions
of aesthetic,logocentriccategories- was not acknowledged, let alone thought.
This recuperation of the primitivehas its own history,which Varnedoe
in various essays narrates: from"formalquotation" (e.g., the appropriations
of most fauves and cubists) to "syntheticmetaphor"(the universal languages of
several abstractexpressionists)to "assimilatedideal" (the primitivismof most of
the artistsin the contemporarysection), the primitivehas become primitivist.30
Reduced to a ghostlyaffinity
outside the tradition,the primitivenow becomes
an "invisibleman"'31withinit. This absorption allows the primitiveto be read
30.
See in particular his "Abstract Expressionism," in "Primitivism,"
pp. 614-659.
In his "Preface" Rubin termsprimitiveart the "invisible man" of modern art
31.
scholarship, a
trope that exceeds his suggestionthat its minor status in the MOMA historyof art is correctedby
this show. For not only does it call to mind another repressed figure,the invisiblewoman artist,it
also suggests that the "correction"of primitiveart occurred long ago, when via "cultural
production" and artisticincorporationit was firstrendered a ghostlypresence, an invisible man, within
the modernist tradition.
56
OCTOBER
retroactivelyalmost as an effectof the modern tradition.Cultural preparation

- that "the primitive"was also achieved fromwithinmodern art- is claimed.
This is the basic argumentof the classic Primitivism
in ModernArt(1938, 1966)
its
first
sentences
read:
artistic
Robert
"The
interestof the twenGoldwater;
by
tiethcenturyin the productionsof primitivepeoples was neitheras unexpected
nor as sudden as is generallysupposed. Its preparation goes well back into the
nineteenthcentury..... ."32This, too, was essentiallythe argumentof the"Primitivism"show: that modern art was "becoming other"prior to the 1907 Picasso
visitto the Trocaddro. Thus the heroes of the show were artistswho "prepared"
the primitive(Gauguin) and/or incorporated it (Picasso)--artists who turned
the "trauma" of the other into an "epiphany"of the same.33
That the primitivewas recognized only afterinnovationswithinthe tradition is well documented: but what is the effectivity
here, the ratio between invention and recognition,innovation and assimilation? Is the primitiveto be
of a constitutiveconstituentdialectic"34withinWestthoughtof as a "robinsonnade
ern tradition,or as a transgressiveevent visitedupon it, at once embraced and
defended against? For surelyprimitivismwas generated as much to "manage"
the shock of the primitiveas to celebrate its art or to use it "counterculturally"
and "preparation";yet here, be(Rubin). As noted, the show argued "affinity"
yond the abstractionof the firstand the recuperationof the second, the primi"the role of the objects Picasso saw on this firstvisit to the
tive is superceded:
was
Trocadero
obviouslyless thatof providingplastic ideas than of sanctioning
radical
more
his even
progress along a path he was already breaking.'"" This
the primitive"role" tends not only to assimilate the
of
retrospectivereading
tradition
but to recuperate the modernistbreak withtradiother
to
primitive
of
in
the
interests
all
tion,
progressivehistory.(As the verycrux of MOMAism,
in
cubism
particular must be protectedfromoutside influence; thus
analytic
tribal art is assigned "but a residual role"36in it.) What, apart fromthe institutional need to secure an officialhistory,is the motivebehind thisdesired supercession? What but the formationof a cultural identity,incumbentas this is on
the simultaneous need and disavowal of the other?
Generally perceived as primal and exotic, the primitiveposed a double
threatto the logocentricWest, the threatof othernessand relativism. It also
in ModernArt, New York, Vintage Books, 1966, p. 3.
Robert Goldwater, Primitivism
32.
33.
See Rubin, "Picasso," in "Primitivism,"
pp. 240-343. "The changes in modern art at issue
were already underway when vanguard artistsfirstbecame aware of tribal art" (Rubin, "Introduction," p. 11).
34.
Levi-Strauss, "History and Dialectic," in TheSavageMind, Chicago, Universityof Chicago
Press, 1966, p. 264.
35.
Rubin, "Picasso," p. 265.
36.
Ibid., p. 309. A residual role but perhaps a real "affinity":for it could be argued that
cubism, like some tribal art, is a process of "splitrepresentation."See Levi-Strauss, "Split Representation in the Art of Asia and America," in Structural
(Vol. 1), pp. 245-268.
Anthropology
Unconscious
The "Primitive"
ofModernArt
57
artifact,more "immediate,"more "magical." We know

posed a doubly different
how the early moderns reclaimed this artifactas art, abstracted it into form;
how, also, the "Primitivism"show mitigatedits otherness,projected it as affinity. Here we may see how this othernesswas furtherrecouped by a reading of
the tribal artistthat served to recenterthe modern artist,rendered somewhat
marginal or academic by mass culture, as a "shamanistic"figure.Meanwhile,
the tribal object with its ritual/symbolicexchange value was put on display,
reinscribedin terms of exhibition/signexchange value. (Could it be that the
"magic" perceived in the object was in part its differencefromthe commodity
form,which modern art resistedbut to which it was partlyreduced?) In this
way, the potentialdisruptionposed by the tribalwork- that art mightreclaim
a ritual function,that it might retain an ambivalence of the sacred object or
giftand not be reduced to the equivalence of the commodity-was blocked.
social exchangejust as the
And the Africanfetish,which representsa different
modern works aspire to one, became another kind of fetish: the "magical"
commodity.
MRiiiililsm
M"::::"
SIMI,
TIP,-
'oil'oi
i~i~ini-?:l~iJ
...
...........ii:::
:
..~i:-j~iiiii
.tl-i~:~~:-'-:
::
::
l::
~
Paris.1911.
Braquein hisstudio,
Georges
58
OCTOBER
In the "Primitivism"show, a transgressive model of modernism was

glimpsed,one which, repressedby the formalistaccount, mighthave displaced
the MOMA model- its "Hegelian" history,its "Bauhausian" ideals, its formalhistoricistoperation (e.g., of abstractionachieved by analyticreductionwithin
the patriarchalline: Manet . . . Cezanne ... Picasso: of the Westerntradition).
This displacement,however, was only a feint:this"new" model- that the very
condition of the so-called modern break with traditionis a break outside itwas suggested, occluded, recouped. With transgressionwithout rendered as
dialectic within,the officialmodel of modern art- a multiplicityof breaks reininto a syntheticline of formalinnovations- is prescribed (by the artist/critic)
is
causal
time
of history,the narrative space of the museum.
as
the
served,
Seen as a genuine agenda, the show presents this conflictedscenario:
MOMA moves to repositionthe modern as transgressivebut is blocked by its
own premises, and the contradictionis "resolved"by a formalistapproach that
reduces what was to be pronounced. Seen as a false agenda, this cynical scenario emerges: the show pretendsto revise the MOMA storyof art, to disrupt
its formaland narrativeunity,but only so as to reestablishit: the transgressive
is acknowledgedonly to be again repressed. As suggested,thatthis"correction"
is presentednow is extremelyoverdetermined.How better,in the unconscious
ofthe museum, to "resolve"these contradictionsthan witha show suggestiveon
the one hand of a transgressivemodernism and on the other of a still active
primitivism?Not only can MOMA then recoup the modern-transgressive,it
can do so as ifit had rejected its own formalistpast. This maneuver also allows
it at once to contain the returnof its repressedand to connect witha neoprimitivistmomentin contemporaryart: MOMAism is not past afterall! In all these
ways, the critique posed by the primitiveis contravened, absorbed withinthe
body of modern art: "As ifwe were afraidto conceive of the Other in the time of
our own thought."37
Primitivism
Historically,theprimitiveis articulatedby the West in deprivativeor supplemental terms: as a spectacle of savagery or as a state of grace, as a socius
withoutwritingor the Word, withouthistoryor culturalcomplexity;or as a site
of originaryunity, symbolic plenitude, natural vitality.There is nothingodd
about this Eurocentricconstruction:the primitivehas served as a coded other
at least since the Enlightenment,usually as a subordinatetermin its imaginary
set of oppositions (light/dark,rational/irrational,civilized/savage). This domesticatedprimitiveis thus constructive,not disruptive,of the binary ratioof
the West; fixedas a structuralopposite or a dialectical otherto be incorporated,
37.
Michel Foucault, TheArchaeology

ofKnowledge,New York, Harper and Row, 1972, p. 12.
Unconscious
The "Primitive"
ofModernArt
59
it assists in the establishmentof a Western identity,center, norm, and name.

In its modernistversion the primitivemay appear transgressive,it is true, but
it stillserves as a limit: projected withinand without,the primitivebecomes a
figureof our unconscious and outside (a figureconstructedin modern art as
well as in psychoanalysisand anthropologyin the privilegedtriad of the primitive, the child, and the insane).
If Rubin presented the art-historicalcode of the primitive,Varnedoe offereda philosophical reading of primitivism.In doing so, he reproducedwithin
it the very Enlightenmentlogic by which the primitivewas firstseized, then
(re)constructed.There are two primitivisms,Varnedoe argues, a good, rational
one and a dark, sinisterone.38 In the first,the primitiveis reconciled with the
scientificin a search forfundamentallaws and universal language (the putative
cases are Gauguin and certain abstractexpressionists).This progressiveprimitivismseeks enlightenment,not regressiveescape into unreason, and thinksthe
primitiveas a "spiritualregeneration"(in which"thePrimitiveis held to be spirituallyakin to that of the new man"),39 not as a social transgression.Thus recouped philosophically,the primitivebecomes part of the internalreformation
of the West, a moment within its reason: and the West, culturallyprepared,
escapes the radical interrogationwhich it otherwiseposes.
But more is at stake here, forthe reason thatis at issue is none otherthan
the Enlightenment,which to the humanist Varnedoe remains knightlike;indeed, he cites the sanguine Gauguin on the "luminous spread of science, which
today fromWest to East lightsup all the modern world."40Yet in the dialectic
of the Enlightenment,as Adorno and Horkheimerargued, the liberationof the
other can issue in its liquidation; the enlightenmentof "affinity"
may indeed
eradicate difference.41
(And if this seems extreme, thinkof those who draw a
directline fromthe Enlightenmentto the Gulag.) Western man and his primitive other are no more equal partners in the march of reason than they were
in the spread of the word, than they are in the marketingof capitalism. The
Enlightenmentcannot be protectedfromits other legacy, the "bad-irrational"
primitivism(Varnedoe's dramatic example is Nazi Blood and Soil, the swastika
ur-sign), any more than the "good-rational"primitivism(e.g., the ideographic
explorationsof Picasso) can be redeemed fromcolonial exploitation. Dialectically, the progressivityof the one is the regressionof the other.
Varnedoe argues, via Gauguin, that "modern artisticprimitivism"is not
"antitheticalto scientificknowledge."42One can only agree, but not as he in38.
See Varnedoe, "Gauguin," pp. 201-203, and "Contemporary Explorations," pp. 652-653.
39.
Ibid., p. 202.
40.
Ibid.
41.
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialecticof Enlightenment,
trans. John Cumming, New York, Seabury Press, 1972.
42.
Varnedoe, "Gauguin," p. 203.
60
OCTOBER
tends it, for primitivismis indeed instrumentalto such power-knowledge,to

the "luminous spread" ofWesterndomination. On the one hand, the primitivist
incorporationof the other is another formof conquest (if a more subtle one
than the imperialistextractionoflabor and materials); on the other,it serves as
its displacement, its disguise, even its excuse. Thus, to pose the relationof the
primitive and the scientificas a benign dialogue is cruelly euphemistic: it
obscures the real affiliationsbetween science and conquest, enlightenmentand
eradication, primitivistart and imperialistpower. (This can be pardoned of a
romanticartistat the end of the last centurywho, immersedin the ideology of
of these ideas, but not
a scientisticavant-garde, could not know the effectivity
of an art historianat the end of this century.)
Apart fromthe violence done to the otherin the occlusion of the imperialof the Enlightenmentas a
ist connectionof primitivismand in the mystification
universal good, this good/bad typologytends to mistake the disruptionposed
by the primitiveand to cast any embrace of this disruption- any resistance
to an instrumental,reificatoryreason, any reclamation of cognitivemodes repressed in its regime- as "nihilistic,"regressive,"pessimistic."43(It is thus that
the transgressiveprimitivismof such artistsas Smithson is dismissed.) We are
leftwhere we began, locked in our old specular code of ethical oppositions. But
thenwe weretold all along thattheissue was "human creativitywhereverfound":
This is the extremeof liberal thoughtand the most beautifulway of
preservingthe initiativeand priorityofWesternthoughtwithin"dialogue" and under the sign of the universalityof the human mind (as
always forEnlightenmentanthropology).Here is the beautifulsoul!
Is it possible to be more impartial in the sensitive and intellectual
knowledgeof the other?This harmonious vision of two thoughtprocesses renderstheirconfrontation
perfectlyinoffensive,by denyingthe
differenceof the primitivesas an element of rupturewith and subversion of (our) "objectifiedthoughtand its mechanisms.""44
There is a counterreading of the primitiveprecisely as subversive, to
which we must return,but it is importantto consider here what cultural function primitivismgenerallyperforms.As a fetishisticrecognition-and-disavowal
of difference,primitivisminvolves a (mis)constructionof the other. That much
is clear. But it also involves a (mis)recognitionof the same. "If the West has
43. See, forexample,Varnedoe,"Contemporary
pp. 665, 679.
Exploration,"
44. Jean Baudrillard,TheMirrorofProduction,
trans.Mark Poster,St. Louis, Telos Press,
is to Levi-Strauss's
claim,in TheRaw andtheCooked
1975,p. 90. The reference
(trans.J. and D.
Weightman,New York,Harperand Row, 1969,pp. 13-14),that"itis in thelastresortimmatein thisbookthethought
rialwhether
processesoftheSouthAmericanIndianstakeplacethrough
or whetherminetakeplace throughthemediumof theirs.What
themediumof mythoughts,
oftheidentity
ofthosewhohappentobe givingitexmattersis thatthehumanmind,regardless
structure... ."
intelligible
pression,shoulddisplayan increasingly
Unconscious
The "Primitive"
ofModernArt
61
"itis because
produced anthropologists,"Levi-Strauss writesin TristesTropiques,
it was tormentedby remorse."45Certainly primitivismis touched by this remorse, too; as the "elevation"of the artifactto art, of the tribalto humanity,it
is a compensatoryform.It is not simplythatthiscompensation is false,thatthe
artifactis evacuated even as it is elevated (the ritualworkbecome an exhibition
form,the ambivalent object reduced to commodityequivalence), thatfinallyno
white skin fond of black masks can ever recompense the colonialist subjection
detailed in Fanon's BlackSkin WhiteMasks. To value as art what is now a ruin;
to locate what one lacks in what one has destroyed:more is at work here than
compensation. Like fetishism,primitivismis a systemof multiple beliefs; an
imaginary resolution of a real contradiction:46 a repression of the fact that a
breakthroughin our art, indeed a regenerationof our culture, is based in part
on the breakup and decay of othersocieties,thatthe modernistdiscoveryof the
primitiveis not only in part itsoblivionbut itsdeath. And the finalcontradiction
or aporia is this: no anthropologicalremorse,aestheticelevation, or redemptive
exhibitioncan corrector compensate this loss becausetheyareall implicated
in it.
Primitivism,then, not only absorbs the potential disruptionof the tribal
objects into Western forms,ideas, and commodities, it also symptomatically
manages the ideological nightmareof a great art inspired by spoils. More, as
an artisticcoup founded on militaryconquest, primitivismcamouflages this
historicalevent, disguises the problem of imperialismin termsof art, affinity,
dialogue, to the point (the point of the MOMA show) where the problem appears "resolved."
A counterdiscourseto primitivismis posed differently
at different
moments:
the destructionof racial or evolutionist myths, the critique of functionalist
models of the primitivesocius, the questioning of constructsof the tribal, and
so forth.Levi-Strauss has argued most publiclyagainst these models and myths
in a culturalistreading that the "savage mind" is equally complex as the Western, that primitivesociety is indeed based on a nature/cultureoppositionjust
as our own is. Other ethnologistslike Marshall Sahlins and Pierre Clastres
have also countered the negative conception of the primitiveas a people without god, law, or language. Where Levi-Strauss argues thatthe primitivesocius
is not withouthistorybut thinksit as form,Sahlins writesthatpaleolithichunters and gatherers,far froma subsistence society,constitutethe "firstaffluent"
one, and Clastres (a studentof Levi-Strauss) contended that the lack of a state
in the primitivesocius is a sign not of a prehistoricalstatus,as it may be thought
45.
Livi-Strauss, TristesTropiques,trans.J. and D. Weightman, New York, Atheneum, 1978,
p. 389.
46.
This definitionof art (see note 7) was developed by Levi-Strauss in relation to a tribal
form,Caduveo face painting; see TristesTropiques,pp. 196-197.
62
OCTOBER
in a Western teleology,but of an active exorcismof externalforceor hierarchical power: a societynot withoutbut againstthe state.47
Such a theoreticaldisplacement is not simplyan event internalto ethnolit
ogy: is partlyincitedby anticolonial movementsofthe postwarperiod and by
thirdworld resistance in our own; and it is partlyaffirmedby a politicization
of otherdisciplines. For ifprimitivismis denial of difference,then the countermeasure is precisely its insistence,"opening the culture to experiences of the
Other," as Edward Said writes,"therecoveryof a historyhithertoeithermisrepresentedor renderedinvisible."48Finally,no doubt, a counterdiscoursecan only
come througha countermemory,an account ofthemodern/primitive
encounter
fromthe "other"side.49But lest thisrecoveryof the otherbe a recuperationinto
a Western narrative,a political genealogy of primitivismis also necessary,one
which would trace the affiliationsbetween primitivistart and colonial practice.
It is preciselythisgenealogythatthe MOMA show does not (cannot?) attempt;
indeed, the issue of colonialism, when raised at all, was raised in colonialist
terms, as a question of the accessibilityof certain tribal objects in the West.
As fora culturalcounterpractice,one is suggestedby the "primitive"operand by the surrealistreception of the primitiveas a rupture.
ation of bricolage
the
dissident
surrealists(Bataille chief among them) present, if not a
Indeed,
as
"counterprimitivism" such, then at least a model of how the othernessof the
primitivemightbe thoughtdisruptively,not recuperated abstractly.It is well
known that several ofthese surrealists,some ofwhom were amateur anthropologists,were not as oblivious as mostfauvesand cubiststo the contextsand codes
of the primitive,that some politicized ratherthan aestheticizedthe primitivistimperialistconnection (in 1931, Aragon and others organized an anticolonial
exhibitionto counterthe officialExpositioncolonialein the new Musee des Colonies). And when these "ethnographicsurrealists"did aestheticize, it tended to
be in the interestsof"culturalimpuritiesand disturbingsyncretisms."Which is
formbut its bricoli
to say that theyprized in the tribal object not its raisonnable
but
its
not
its
mediatory possibilities
transgressivevalue. In
heterogeneity,
short,the primitiveappeared less as a solution to Western aestheticproblems
47.
See, in general, Marshall Sahlins, Cultureand PracticalReason,Chicago, Universityof ChiAgainsttheState,trans. Robert Hurley, New York,
cago Press, 1976; and Pierre Clastres, Society
Urizen Books, 1974.
48.
Edward W. Said, "Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and Community," in TheAntied. Hal Foster, Port Townsend (WA), Bay Press, 1983, p. 158.
Aesthetic,
49.
As for a Western text that involves this "other"account, an example is provided by the
Jean Rouch filmLes MaitresFous, a documentary of the trauma of imperialistsubjection ritually
worked throughby an Africantribe. In a trance the tribesmenare one by one "possessed" by the
white colonial figures,the Crazy Masters--an exorcism that inverts the one in the Demoiselles.
Here, though, the image of the other is used to purge the other, and the objectificationis reversed: it is the white man who appears as the other, the savage, the grotesque. At the end the
tribesmen returnto the colonial city and once again assume subject-positions- in the army, in
road crews, in the "native population."
Unconscious
The "Primitive"
ofModernArt
63
than as a disruptionof Western solutions. Rather than seek to masterthe primitive-or, alternatively,to fetishizeits differenceinto opposition or identitythese primitivistswelcomed "the unclassified,unsought Other."o50
It is most likelyexcessive (and worse, dualistic!) to oppose these two readings of the primitive- the one concernedto incorporatethe primitive,the other
eager to transgresswith it- and to extrapolatethe latterinto a counterpractice
to the former.(Again, such a counterpracticeis not forthe West to supply.)
However, bricolage-which Levi-Strauss, influencedby the surrealists,did after
all defineas a "primitive"mode - is today posed in the Third World (and in its
name) as such a resistantoperation, by which the othermightappropriatethe
formsof the modern capitalist West and fragmentthem with indigenous ones
in a reflexive,critical montage of syntheticcontradictions.51Such bricolage
might in turn reveal that Western culture is hardly the integral"engineered"
whole that it seems to be but that it too is bricold
(indeed, Derrida has deconstructedthe Levi-Strauss opposition bricoleur/engineer
to the effectthat the latter is the product, the mythof the former).52
One tactical problem is that bricolage,
as the inversionof the appropriative
abstractionof primitivism,might seem retroactivelyto excuse it. Indeed, the
famous Levi-Strauss formulaforbricolage
is uncannilyclose to the Barthes definition of appropriation(or "myth"). In his definition(1962) Levi-Strauss cites
Franz Boas on mythical systems: "'It would seem that mythologicalworlds
have been built up, only to be shatteredagain, and that new worlds were built
fromthe fragments'"; and adds: "In the continual reconstructionfromthe same
materials, it is always earlier ends which are called upon to play the part of
means: the signifiedchanges into the signifyingand vice versa."53 Compare
Barthes on myth(1957): "It is constructedfroma semiological chain which existed beforeit: it is a second-order
semiological
system.That which is a sign . . . in
the firstsystembecomes a mere signifierin the second."54The differenceis that
is a process of texmythis a one-way appropriation, an act of power; bricolage
50.
Clifford,"On Ethnographic Surrealism," p. 564.
This strategywas posed by Abdellah Hammoudi at the symposium (Nov. 3-4,
51.
1984) held
at MOMA in conjunction with the show.
52. Jacques Derrida, "Structure,Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," in
trans. Alan Bass, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1978, p. 285. In
Writingand Difference,
Of Grammatology
(trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1976, p. 105), Derrida writesof Levi-Strauss: "At once conservingand annulling inherited
conceptual oppositions, this thought, like Saussure's, stands on a borderline: sometimes within
an uncriticizedconceptuality,sometimes puttinga strainon the boundaries, and
workingtoward
deconstruction."
53.
Livi-Strauss, The SavageMind, p. 21.
54.
Roland Barthes, "Myth Today," in Mythologies,
trans. Annette Lavers, New York, Hill and
Wang, 1972, p. 114. In For a CritiqueofthePoliticalEconomyoftheSign (trans. Charles Levin, St.
Louis, Telos Press, 1981, p. 96), Jean Baudrillard writes: "This semiological reduction of the
symbolic propertyconstitutesthe ideological process."
64
OCTOBER
tual play, of loss and gain: whereas mythabstractsand pretendsto the natural,
cuts up, makes concrete,delightsin the artificial- it knows no identity,
bricolage
stands forno pretenseof presence or universal guise forrelativetruths.Thus, if
it is by a "mythical"reduction of content to formthat the primitivebecomes
primitivist,
by a mythicalabstractionof signifiedintosignifierthatAfricanritual
objects, customs,peoplebecome "Africanity"-ifit is by myththatone arrivesat
and universality- then bricolage
may well constitutea counterpractice.
affinity
For in bricolage
not only may the primitivesignifiedbe reclaimed but the Western signifiedmay be mythifiedin turn, which is to say that primitivism(the
mythsof the African,the Oceanic, that stillcirculate among us) may possibly
be deconstructedand other models of interculturalexchange posed. However
compromisedby itsappropriationas an artisticdevice in the West (superficially
understood, bricolagehas become the "inspiration"of much primitivistart),
remains a strategicpractice, forjust as the concept of mythdemystifies
bricolage
"natural"modes of expressionand "neutral"uses of other-culturalforms,so too
or
deconstructssuch notions as a modern/tribal"affinity"
the device of bricolage
modernist"universality"and such constructsas a fixedprimitive"essence" or a
stable Western "identity."
The OtherIs BecomingtheSame,
theSame Is Becoming
Different
Below, I want brieflyto pose, to collide, two readings of the primitiveencounterwiththe West: thatof its progressiveeclipse in modernhistoryand that
of its disruptivereturn(in displaced form) in contemporarytheory. The first
history,as we have seen, positionsthe primitiveas a moment in the "luminous
spread" of Western reason; the second, a genealogy, traces how the primitive,
is to thinkthese contaken into this order, returnsto disruptit. The difficulty
traryreadings simultaneously,the firstaggressivelyhistoricist,the second historicallyenigmatic.
If the identityof the West is defineddialecticallyby its other, what happens to this identitywhen its limitis crossed, its outside eclipsed? (This eclipse
may not be entirelyhypotheticalgiven a multinationalcapitalism that seems to
know no limits,to destructureall oppositions,to occupy its fieldall but totally.)
One effectis that the logic thatthinksthe primitivein termsof opposition or as
an outside is threatened(as Derrida noted in the work of LUvi-Straussor as
Foucault came to see within his own thought, such structuralterms can no
longerbe supportedeven as methodologicaldevices).55In the second narrative,
55. See Derrida,"Structure,
Sign,and Play,"and Foucault,"History,Discourse,and DisconofFrenchdeconstrucFredericJamesonhas suggestedin thisregardthatone "referent"
tinuity."
ed. Victor
tionmaywellbe Americancapital.See his"Pleasure:A PoliticalIssue,"in Formations,
Burgin,et al., London, Routledge& Kegan Paul, 1983.
Unconscious
The "Primitive"
ofModernArt
65
this"eclipsed"or sublated primitivereemergesin Westerncultureas its scandal

-where it links up genealogically with poststructuralistdeconstructionand
politicallywithfeministtheoryand practice. In thispassage the primitiveother
is transformedutterly,and here in particular its real world historymust be
thought.For the historicalincorporationof the outside mightwell be the condition that compels its eruption into the fieldof the same as difference.Indeed,
the eclipse of otherness,posed as a metaphysicalstructureof opposites or as an
outside to be recovered dialectically, is the beginning of difference-and of a
potential break with the phallocentricorder of the West.
This genealogy is not as conjectural as it may seem: connectionsbetween
certain "ethnographicsurrealists"and poststructuralists
are thereto be traced.
The intermediaryfiguresare Lacan, Levi-Strauss, and, above all, Bataille,
whose notions of dipenseand la partmaudite,developed out of Mauss's theoryof
the gift,have influencedBaudrillard, and whose notion oftransgressionhas influencedFoucault and Derrida. On thisreading, ifthe early moderns sublated
the primitiveinto reason, the dissident surrealiststhoughtit transgressively;
but it was leftto poststructuralismand feminismto theorizeit, however transformedin position and effectivity.
As Rosalind Krauss has suggested,the poststructuralistand feministdeconstructionof phallocentricoppositions is related
- i.e., of oppositions
to the "collapse of differences"
between natural and unnatural forms,conscious and unconscious states,realityand representation,politics
and art- thatis at the heartof surrealistscandal.56 It is thistransgressiveenterprise that is dismissed as "arbitrary"and "trivial"in postwar American formalism in which, in a neomodernist moment, crisis is once more recouped for
continuity.Indeed, this collapse or ruptureis not thoughtdeeply again till the
art of the generationof Smithson, in which formalistcriteriagive way to a concern with "structure,sign, and play," in which, with such devices as the sitenonsite, the formof the exhibitionwork with expressive origin and centered
meaning is displaced by a serial or textual mode "witha concept of limitsthat
could never be located."57
On the one hand, then, the primitiveis a modern problem, a crisisin cultural identity,which the West moves to resolve: hence the modernistconstruction "primitivism,"the fetishisticrecognition-and-disavowalof the primitive
difference.This ideological resolutionrendersit a "nonproblem"forus. On the
otherhand, this resolutionis only a repression:delayed in our political unconscious, the primitivereturnsuncannily at the moment of its potential eclipse.
The ruptureof the primitive,managed by the moderns, becomes our postmodern event.58
56.
Rosalind Krauss, "Preying on 'Primitivism,'"Artand Text,no. 17 (April 1985).
57.
Ibid.
58.
Such "delays" are common enough: for example, the critique of representation,initially
undertaken in cubism and collage, that returns in a differentregisterin postmodernistart.
66
OCTOBER
The firsthistoryof the primitiveencounterwiththe West is familiar

narrativeofdomination.In thisnarrative1492 is an inenough,thefatalistic
ofAmerica(and
auguraldate,foritmarkstheperiodnotonlyofthediscovery
therounding
oftheCape ofGood Hope) butalso oftherenaissance
ofantiquity.
withtheotherand a returnto the
allow
These twoevents- an encounter
same-ofthemodernWestand theinstauration
dialectical
fortheincorporation
ofits
in Spain, 1492 also marksthebanishmentoftheJews
history.(Significantly,
modernEuropeangrammar;in other
and Arabsand thepublicationofthefirst
of
the
within
and the encodingof the otherwiththe
other
words,
expulsion
the
first
in Europeand of"thefirst
is
the
of
museums
period
out.)59This, too,
workson the'lifeand manners'ofremotepeoples"- a collectionoftheancients
and spatiallydistant.60
This collectiononly
and "savages,"of the historically
with
and
intoa worldas
the
West
colonialism
develops
capitalism
expands,
with
the
the
is able to
the
West
century,
system.By
eighteenth
Enlightenment,
and thusall othercultureswere
reflecton itself"as a culturein theuniversal,
enteredintoitsmuseumas vestigesof itsown image."61
dominaThereis no need to rehearsethis"dialectic"
here,theprogressive
tionofexternaland internalnature(thecolonizationoftheoutsideand theunto notethatthishistoryis notwithoutitsrepreconscious),but it is important
in moderntheory.Indeed,in 1946Merleau-Ponty
and contestations
sentations
could write:
- thephilosophies
ideasofthepastcentury
All thegreatphilosophical
and
Germanexistentialism
ofMarxand Nietzsche,phenomenology,
who
started
it
was
he
in
their
-had
Hegel;
beginnings
psychoanalysis
itintoan expanded
and integrate
to exploretheirrational
theattempt
reason,whichremainsthetaskofour century.62
There is, however,an obvious paradox here: the Westernratiois defined
itsdialecticalidentity
requiresthe
againsttheveryunreasonthatit integrates;
reducesto thesame. It is this
veryotherthatitabsorbs,disavows,or otherwise
as elaboratedby Batailleamidstdisparadoxthatthenotionoftransgression,
addresses.
the
oftheprimitive,
and
otherness
cussionsofboth"theendofhistory"
in
Alexandre
lectures
on
the
Kojeve the'30s;
Hegel givenby
(Batailleattended
as transgressive.)
oftheprimitive
he was also, ofcourse,theprincipaltheorist
concernwiththeother
In hisessayon Bataille- an essayin whichthesurrealist
Foucaultopconcernwithdifferencemay be linkedto the poststructuralist
trans. Richard Howard, New York, Harper
59.
See Tzvetan Todorov, The ConquestofAmerica,
and Row, 1984, p. 123. Todorov argues thatthe conquest of America was fromone perspectivea
"linguistic"one.
60.
Todorov, p. 109.
61.
Baudrillard, The MirrorofProduction,
pp. 88-89.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Senseand Nonsense,trans. Hubert and Patricia Dreyfus, Evans62.
ton, NorthwesternUniversity Press, 1964, pp. 109-110.
Unconscious
The "Primitive"
ofModernArt
67
poses the transgressiveto the dialectical as a way to thinkthroughthe logic of

contradiction,as a "formof thoughtin which the interrogationof the limitreplaces the search fortotality."63Yet iftransgressionchallenges the dialectic, the
end of history,and the incorporationof the primitiveother,it also presupposes
(or at least foreshadows)them. Which is to say thatthe transgressiveappears as
a stopgap of the dialectical; it recomposes an outside, an other,a sacred, ifonly
in its absence: "All our actions are addressed to this absence in a profanation
which at once identifiesit, dissipates it, exhausts itselfin it, and restoresit in
the emptypurityof its transgression."64
Transgression is thusbound by a paradox of its own: it remarkslimitseven as it violates them, it restoresan outside
even as it testifiesto its loss. It is on the borderlinebetween dialectical thought
and the becoming of difference,
just as the structuralismof Levi-Strauss is on
the borderlinebetween metaphysicaloppositions and deconstruction.
There is no question that today we are beyond thisborder, that we live in
a time of cancelled limits, destructuredoppositions, "dissipated scandals"65
(which is not to say thattheyare not recoded all the time). Clearly, the modern
structuresin whichthe Western subject and socius were articulated(the nuclear
family,the industrialcity, the nation-state)are today remapped in the movement of capital. In this movement the opposition nature/culturehas become
not only theoreticallysuspect but practicallyobsolete: thereare now fewzones
of "savage thought"to oppose to the Western ratio,few primitiveothers not
threatenedby incorporation.But in thisdisplacementof the otherthereis also
a decenteringof the same, as signalled in the '60s when Foucault abandoned
the logic of structuralor dialectical oppositions(e.g., reason/unreason)in favor
of a field of immanent relations, or when Derrida proclaimed the absence of
any fixedcenteror origin,of any "originalor transcendentalsignified. .. outside
a systemof differences."66
It was this that led Foucault to announce, grandly
the
of
dissolution
man
in language. More provocative, however, was
enough,
his suggestion,made at the same moment (1966), that"modern thoughtis advancing towardsthatregionwhere man's Other must become the Same as himself."67In the modern episteme, Foucault argued, the transparent,sovereign
cogitohas brokendown, and Western man is compelled to thinkthe unthought.
Indeed, his verytruthis articulatedin relationto theunconscious and the other;
thus the privilege granted psychoanalysis and ethnology among the modern
human sciences. The question returnsthen: What happens to this man, his
63.
Foucault, "A Preface to Transgression," in Language,Counter-Memory,
Practice,ed. Donald F.
Bouchard, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1977, p. 50.
64.
Ibid., p. 31.
65.
The phrase is Robert Smithson's; see The Writings
ed. Nancy Holt, New
ofRobertSmithson,
York, New York University Press, 1979, p. 216.
66.
Derrida, "Structure,Sign, and Play," p. 280.
67.
Foucault, The Orderof Things,New York, Vintage Books, 1970. p. 238.
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truth,when the unconscious and the otherare penetrated- integratedintoreason, colonized by capital, commodifiedby mass culture?
Tellingly, it was in the '30s and '40s, afterthe high stage of imperialism
and before the anticolonial wars of liberation, that the discourse of the other
was most thoroughlytheorized-by Lacan, of course, and Livi-Strauss (who,
in TristesTropiques,
pondered "theethnologicalequivalentof themirrorstage")68
but also by Sartre, who argued that the otherwas necessaryto the "fusion"of
any group, and Adorno and Horkheimer,who elaborated the role of otherness
in Nazism. I mentionthese latterhere to suggestthat, howeverdecenteredby
the other,the (Western) subject continuesto encroach mercilesslyupon it. Indeed by 1962 (when Levi-Strauss wrote that "there are still zones in which
savage thought,like savage species, is relativelyprotected"),69Paul Ricoeur
could foreseea "universalworldcivilization."To Ricoeur, thismomentwas less
one of the imperialist"shockof conquest and domination"than one ofthe shock
of disorientation:forthe othera momentwhen, withthe wars of liberation,the
68. CatherineClement,TheLivesandLegends
ofJacquesLacan,trans.ArthurGoldhammer,
New York,ColumbiaUniversity
Press,1983,p. 76.
69. L vi-Strauss,TheSavageMind,p. 219.
Unconscious
The "Primitive"
ofModernArt
69
"politicsof otherness"had reached its limit,and forthe West a momentwhen it

became "possible that there are just others,that we ourselves are an 'other'
among others."70
This disorientationof a world civilization is hardly new to us today. In
1962 Ricoeur argued that to survivein it each culture must be grounded in its
own indigenous tradition; otherwise this "civilization"would be domination
pure and simple. Similarly,in our own timeJfirgenHabermas has argued that
the modern West, to restoreitsidentity,must criticallyappropriateitstradition
- the very project of Enlightenmentthat led to this "universal civilization"in
the firstplace.71 Allegories of hope, these two readings seem early and late
symptomsof our own postmodernpresent,a momentwhen the West, its limit
apparentlybroached by an all but global capital, has begun to recycleits own
historicalepisodes as stylestogetherwith its appropriated images of exotica (of
domesticated otherness)in a cultureof nostalgia and pastiche- in a cultureof
implosion, "the internalviolence of a saturated whole."72
Ricoeur wrote prescientlyof a moment when "the whole of mankind becomes a kind of imaginarymuseum."73It may be thissense of closure, of claustrophobia that has provoked a new "primitivism"and "Orientalism"in recent
theory:e.g., the Baudrillardiannotionof a primitiveorderof symbolicexchange
that"haunts"our own systemof sign exchange, or the Deleuzian idea of a "savnow deterritorializedby capital; Barthes'sJapan cast as the
age territoriality"
"possibilityof a difference,of a mutation, of a revolution in the proprietyof
symbolicsystems,"or Derrida's or Foucault's China seen as an order of things
that "interrupts"Western logocentrism.74But ratherthan seek or resuscitatea
lost or dead other, why not turn to vital others withinand without- to affirm
theirresistanceto the white,patriarchalorderof Westernculture?For feminists,
for"minorities,"for"tribal"peoples, thereare otherways to narrate thishistory
70.
Paul Ricoeur, "Universal Civilization and National Cultures," in Historyand Truth,trans.
Charles A. Kelbley, Evanston, NorthwesternUniversity Press, 1965, p. 278. Also see Frederic
Jameson, "Periodizing the Sixties," in The SixtiesWithout
Apology,ed. Sayres, Stephanson, et al.,
Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp. 186-188.
71.
See JilrgenHabermas, "Modernity--An Incomplete Project,"in TheAnti-Aesthetic,
pp. 3-15.
72.
Baudrillard, "The Beaubourg Effect,"trans. Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson,
October,no. 20 (Spring 1982), p. 10.
73.
Ricoeur, p. 278. What clearer sign of this implosion-when mankind is treated as a museum of the West - can therebe than the "Primitivism"show? If the "universality"of the Enlightenment positioned the West in a transcendental relation to the primitive,then the "globality"of
multinationalcapital (as representedby Philip Morris) may put us in a transcendentalrelation to
our own modernity.
74.
See Baudrillard, For a CritiqueofthePoliticalEconomyoftheSign, passim; Gilles Deleuze and
Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus,trans. Hurley, Seem, and Lane, New York, Viking Press, 1977,
pp. 139-271; Barthes, The EmpireofSigns,trans. Richard Howard, New York, Hill and Wang,
1982, pp. 3-4; and Derrida, Of Grammatology,
pp. 77-93.
70
OCTOBER
- ways which reject the narcissisticpathos that

of enlightenment/eradication
identifiesthe death of the Hegelian dialectic with the end of Western history
and the end of that historywith the death of man, which also rejectthe reductive reading that the othercan be so "colonized" (as if it were a zone simplyto
occupy, as ifit did not emerge imbricatedin otherspaces, to troubleotherdiscourses)- or even thatWesternsciencesofthe other,psychoanalysisand ethnology, can be fixedso dogmatically.On thisreading the otherremains- indeed,
as the veryfieldof differencein which the subject emerges- to challenge Western pretensesof sovereignty,supremacy, and self-creation.

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The "Primitive" Unconscious of Modern Art

Author(s): Hal Foster

At once eccentricand crucial, Les Demoiselles

whole of it! I understoodwhat the Negroes used theirsculpturesfor.

lected worksof art."6Though the exhibitiondid qualifythe debased art-historical

gressivity"of the encounterwas largelydisregarded,perhaps because it cannot

Quoted by Rubin, "Introduction,"p. 17.

ments neverthelesssuggest the way primitivismis conceived as absorbing the

See in particular his essay on Gauguin in "Primitivism,"

Max Ernst.Bird Head. 1934-35.

are bestowed upon tribalobjects." In both instancesdifferent

directedby Rene d'Harnoncourt. Althoughthis exhibitiondid not mentionthe

own (the intentional,original, "aesthetic,"problem-solving).The status of its

retroactivelyalmost as an effectof the modern tradition.Cultural preparation

artifact,more "immediate,"more "magical." We know

In the "Primitivism"show, a transgressive model of modernism was

Michel Foucault, TheArchaeology

it assists in the establishmentof a Western identity,center, norm, and name.

tends it, for primitivismis indeed instrumentalto such power-knowledge,to

this"eclipsed"or sublated primitivereemergesin Westerncultureas its scandal

The firsthistoryof the primitiveencounterwiththe West is familiar

poses the transgressiveto the dialectical as a way to thinkthroughthe logic of

"politicsof otherness"had reached its limit,and forthe West a momentwhen it

- ways which reject the narcissisticpathos that

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