Primitiveness and the Flight From Modernity

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Primitiveness and the flight

from modernity:sociologyand the avant-garde ininter-war France

Fuyuki Kurasawa

Abstract

This paper examines the links between the French school of sociology and anthro-pology and the surrealist avant-garde in inter-war Paris by unearthing their commonreliance on a cross-cultural critique of European modernity. Accordingly, the paper

focuses on how both currents and notably the Collge de sociologie used represen-tations of a mythical primitive condition to produce an outside of modern societyand an alternative socio-cultural universe from which Europes pathologies could bediagnosed. This self-critique through a comparative lens aimed to radically situate,relativize and decentre the phenomena of rationalization,disenchantment and anomiecharacterizing modernity, which could be shown to be neither natural, eternal,universal nor inevitable, but rather the socio-historical products of developments in aparticular culture during a specific period of its history.

Keywords: French sociology; anthropology; avant-garde; modernity; critique;primitive.

Introduction

Towards the end ofThe Elementary Forms of Religious L ife, considered by manyto be his neglectedmagnum opus, Durkheim anxiously summed up the modernepochs legacy in Europe through the following remark: In short, the formergods are growing old or dying, and others have not been born. (1912: 429).

Copyright 2003 Taylor & Francis LtdISSN 0308-5147 print/ 1469-5766 onlineDOI: 10.1080/ 0308514032000045744

Economy and Society Volume 32 Number 1 February 2003: 728

Fuyuki Kurasawa, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Ar ts, York University, Toronto,Ontario M 3J 1P3, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]


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Simultaneously evoking sociologys normative task of responding to modernitysmoral crisis as well as its ethnological orientation towards other cultural horizons,Durkheims sentence was to reverberate to such an extent that it forms a thread

running through two generations of the some of the French intellectual milieusmost prominent figures. From Durkheim to Mauss and Lvy-Bruhl, and thento the Collge de sociologie as well as Breton and Artaud, this thread undeni-ably bound the French school of sociology and ethnology to surrealist circlesduring the inter-war period; in both movements, the exploration of primitive-ness provided a cultural outside from which to effect a critique of Europeanmodernity. If other commentators have drawn attention to this connection(Aug 1999; Clifford 1988; Krauss 1985; Lvi-Strauss 1971; Mtraux 1963;Richman 1990, 1995), they have stopped short of examining what is to my mind

a crucial question: how did the French schools representations of a mythicalprimitive condition, and subsequently the avant-gardes use of such portray-als, enable them to effect compelling critiques of modern European societies?This paper, then, proposes to address this question by tracing the ethnologicalthread linking the two currents and thereby attempting to unearth the neglectedsubstance of their cross-cultural diagnoses of the pathologies ofmodern Europe.1

Today, the differentia specificaof the sociological tradition in France isproperly recognized: it did not seek to distinguish itself from its anthropologicalcounterpart, in fact employing the latters findings about non-Western culturesto produce critical interpretations of the existing mode of social organization athome. As Lvi-Strauss has commented, In France, from Montaigne on, socialphilosophy was nearly always linked to social criticism. The gathering of socialdata was to provide arguments against the social order. . . . In France, sociologywill remain the offspring of these first attempts at anthropological thinking(Lvi-Strauss 1971: 505). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,Durkheim, Mauss and Lvy-Bruhl continued in the footsteps of their prede-cessors by developing a science of modern society which derived much of itscritical substance from being juxtaposed to a primitive alter ego. Indications ofthe anthropological thrust of their critiques of modernity can be discovered in

their deliberate shifting of sociologys traditional object of study from modernEurope to non-modern and non-European societies. Mauss explained of hiscollaboration with Hubert: Together we discovered the world of the prehistoricand the primitive and the exotic, the Semitic and Indian universes along withthe Ancient and Christian worlds which we had previously known(Mauss 1983:145). Inspired by the encounter with cultural otherness, this sense of wonder-ment constituted a radical decentring of European modernity. Ironically, thisdecentring was so pronounced that some of the French schools descendantsclaimed that it had neglected to confront the contemporary predicament of its

society because excessively drawn to primitiveness.2The above reasons explain, I believe, why the designation Collge desociolo-

gie would appeal to an avant-garde group formed during the inter-war years inParis. By situating themselves within the French sociological constellation,Bataille, Caillois, Leiris and their collaborators could thereby, in howeverunorthodox a manner, draw inspiration from its substantive intercultural

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research to flee from modernitys grasp. During the 1930s, an explicit linkbetween the two currents was to be found in the fact that Mausss lectures wereattended by the same individuals who participated in surrealism, some ofwhom

went on to form the Collge (Bataille 1994: 1045; Caillois 1939a: 14). Morefundamentally, the French schools investigation of primitive societies was tobe the determining influence upon the entire project of the surrealist avant-garde. Bataille made just such a point: It seems very clear and very distinct tome that the quest for primitive culture represents the principal, most decisiveand vital, aspect of the meaning of surrealism, if not its precise definition(Bataille 1994: 71). Jules Monnerot, co-founder and inventor of the nameCollge de sociologie (Hollier 1979: 390), suggested an even more succinctformulation: le surraliste,primitif moderne (the surrealist, a modern primi-

tive) (Monnerot 1945: 121). In essence, then, the inter-war surrealist avant-garde were heirs to the French sociological traditions anthropological legacy,radicalizing certain assessments of modern European society. Partially surpass-ing their progenitorsambivalent appreciation of modernity, the likes ofBreton,Bataille,Caillois and Artaud founded a movement of aesthetic and philosophicalrevolt that embraced primitiveness as the negation of the European experiencesince the sixteenth century.3 Standing outside Europes socio-cultural andnormative bounds, primitive peoples represented an unparalleled figure ofsubversion.

If Durkheims,Mausss and Lvy-Bruhls writings can be situated in afin-de-sicleclimate marked by malaise, those of the surrealist avant-garde must beunderstood as a product of the general sense ofdisillusionment and crisis whichinfected European social life between the two world wars (Monnerot 1945:174;Nadeau 1964: 445).4 Compare, for instance, the following comments fromrepresentatives of the two streams of thought. Reflecting in the aftermath of theFirst World War,through which he had lost both colleagues and friends,a devas-tated yet seemingly resigned Mauss declared: It could be said that it was a lossfor this branch of French science; for me, everything had collapsed.Perhaps thebest that I had been able to give of myself disappeared with them (1983: 141).

Speaking in 1943, at the height of the Second World War, Breton was to adoptan altogether different tone in summing up the feelings ofdisgust which inspiredthe avant-garde.

What! Humanity tears itself apart more efficiently than in its earlier stages,two successive generations see the sun of their twenty years approaching onlyto be rushed on to the battlefields and some would have us believe that thishumanity knows how to rule itself; that it is sacrilege to object to the prin-ciples on which its psychic structure is founded! But what, I ask, what is that

narrow reasonwhich has been taught us if that reason must, from life to life,yield place to the unreason ofwars? Must not that pretended reason be a lure?Must it not be usurping the rights of a true unyieldingreasonwhich we mustsubstitute for it at all costs and towards which we can move only by making,at the outset, tabula rasaof conventional modes of thought?

(Breton 1943:237)

Fuyuki Kurasawa: Primit iveness and the flight from modernity 9


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Sociological anxiety gave way to outright refusal, a bubbling rage directed at theperceived effects of civilization.

Before plunging into the detail ofthe argument,a caveat is in order.Although,

to return to my opening metaphor, a thread is being chased and thus a tapestrywoven by way of the commonalities between different authors, I do not intendto downplay the significant divergences between them. While the French schoolshared an interest in primitiveness, the disagreements between the Durkheimi-ans and Lvy-Bruhl on the subject grew larger as the years went by.5Durkheimand Mauss admonished their colleague on two counts: first, Lvy-Bruhlsdichotomy between primitive and modern thinking was untenable, since thetwo societies and modes of thought were continuous and much more closelyrelated to one another; second, the act of branding all societies by the label

primitive falsely homogenizes them, erasing the diversity of non-Europeanpeoples (Durkheim 1912:240,1913:147;Mauss 1923:1268;1939:5634).6Forits part, the inter-war surrealist avant-garde was by no means a coherent school,though Bataille, Caillois and Artaud did at some point participate in Bretonsproject. Consequently, it is useful to keep in mind the distinction betweenorthodox and dissident branches of surrealism the first coalescing aroundBreton, the second around the Collge de sociologie, the magazineDocumentsand the journal Acphale.7 Finally, not all members of the avant-garde wereenamoured of their Durkheimian identification; in particular, the perceivedepistemological positivism and normative scientism of Durkheims early workwere sticking points for some.8

Despite these fractures, a common theme links all these authors to oneanother: the invocation of primitiveness as the key cultural motif ofa critique ofEuropean modernity or, put differently, a flight from its confines through theexploration of primitive cultures. Modern society was thus believed to havebeen colonized by processes of rationalization, various modes of instrumentalrationality having penetrated into most, if not all, the domains of social life.According to the French school and the avant-garde, this rationalist colonizationhad devastating consequences not least of which was (to use Schillers and

Webers evocative phrase) the gradual disenchantment of the world as magic,myth and the supernatural were chased away in the name of scientific,Cartesianlogic. Accordingly, it was believed that a state of anomie had appeared: collec-tive consciousness and social solidarity had crumbled, giving way to a societyfragmented to an unprecedented degree in which individuals were bereft of anysense of common moral guidance. Yet this scenario, largely subscribed to by thetwo currents that concern us here, could emerge only from its juxtaposition toan opposite socio-cultural reality. Primitiveness was thus imagined as acondition in which mystical and alogical thinking prevails over its rationalist

brethren, and in which morality rather than calculation guides action. Theprimitive universe was thus portrayed as an enchanted one where, since naturalor transcendental forces still rule, nothing seemed impossible. It was perceivedas vibrant because well endowed in collective myths and sacred rituals. Theprimitive community was seen as the source of creativity and moral fervour, a



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possibility which modern Europes cult of the monadic individual had fore-closed.

In the following pages, I propose to unearth the sources of this critical

interpretation of European modernity by foregrounding the French schoolsinquiries about primitive societies and the subsequent surrealist avant-gardeappropriation of their forebears ethnological reflections. Being understood asan alternative socio-cultural universe, primitiveness allowed both currents ofthought to broaden their perceptions of the range of human possibilities, andthereby to relativize the mode of social organization they had inherited as oneamong many others.As such, the two strands were a particularly salient exampleof part of what I have termed elsewhere the ethnological imagination(Kurasawa 2000, forthcoming), the self-critique of the here and now through

cross-cultural thinking. Let us see how this self-critique unfolded,so as to pointout that the experiences of rationalization,disenchantment and anomie were notnatural, eternal or universal, but in fact circumscribed within Europe in themodern era.

The tyranny of rationalism

Rationalization, the series ofprocesses analysed with great insight by Weber,wasconsidered to be the defining trait of European modernity by the French schooland the avant-garde.And, like Weber, these thinkers shared a fundamental senseofuneasevis--visthe relentless drive towards a fully rationalized society. By nomeans was purposive-instrumental action considered superior or more desirablethan other forms of being in the world, although its advent is deemed bothirreversible and inevitable (Durkheim and Mauss 1913: 4789; Karady 1968:xlvxlvi).9 Indeed, rationalization was believed to have been transformed into amovement with its own internal logic;initially designed to liberate human beingsfrom the ravages of medieval superstition and ignorance, a form of Cartesianrationalism had become sovereign. Everything could be knowable and thus

controlled through calculation. Instrumental reason held the key to a long-helddream, that of conquering all mysteries and thereby achieving complete humanmastery over the world. According to these authors, then, emotional and ethicallife was correspondingly being marginalized as the sphere of subjectivity andnormativity was relegated to a subordinate position within modern society(Caillois 1939a:134;Durkheim and Mauss 1903:88;Lvy-Bruhl 1910:456,51).

The French school and the surrealists highlighted a similar problem: at whatcost the reign of rationalism? It had, they contended, dehumanized us to someextent: part of our capacity to cultivate feelings and values had been eroded.

Though tremendously efficient, logical thinking was also portrayed as a coldbeast, which should never totally seduce humankind. It could not nourish oursouls or spirits, for it was incapable of addressing a more profound and timelessreality that is, our need to be integrated into, rather than standing aloof from,our natural surroundings as well as the moral community within which we were



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born (Lvy-Bruhl 1910: 3456). As Mauss stated in a striking passage from hisEssay on the Gift:

It is only our Western societies that quite recently turned man into aneconomic animal. . . . Homo oeconomicusis not behind us, but before, like themoral man, the man of duty, the scientific man and the reasonable man. Fora long time man was something quite different; and it is not so long now sincehe became a machine a calculating machine.

(Mauss 19234: 74)

Akin to Weber (19045) before him, Mauss was to identify capitalism as theincarnation of the principles of rationalism in modern European society. Themetamorphosis of the human being into a calculating machinehad elevated the

ascetic, meticulous and relentless pursuit of profit into a new cultural ethos.Rationalized capitalism was, so Mauss argued, basically soulless because con-tagiously instrumental; in the end, it converted individuals themselves intocommodities whose value could be measured like any other object (Mauss19234:3, 6670, 735). Implicit here, as we shall discuss later, is the belief thathuman beings had been and were viewed as more than logical animals in previoustimes and other places.

The over-valorization ofCartesian logic elevated scientism to the status of thenew,all-encompassing world-view ofmodernity. For the avant-garde in particu-

lar,the fact that predictability,efficiency,uniformity and control had been trans-formed into ends in themselves threatened to turn humanity into a veritable cogin the monstrous apparatus of modern society (Bataille 1938: 1315). Europehad the dubious distinction of launching an epoch during which individuals hadlost considerable freedom to think and act. Lvy-Bruhls questioning ofrationalisms hold was picked up by surrealism, which argued that the confinesof the human mind had shrunk to such an extent that only that which wasimmediately visible and logically explained could be considered real or true.Everything else (e.g. dreams, poetry, the unconscious) had to be discarded intothe realm of the false, the impossible or the fictional (Artaud 1971a: 1920;Breton 1924:410;Lvy-Bruhl 1910:117,1935:2567;Monnerot 1945:1416).To use Bretons (1930: 187) evocative image, realism acted as a cancer of themind, a force of oppression rather than erstwhile emancipation.

Whether orthodoxor dissident, surrealists portrayed modern Europe as anessentially mechanized civilization, in which order and normality are idealized.Spontaneity, creativity and,most of all, the possibility of transgression had beencrushed by a stultifying socio-cultural environment (Bataille 1985: 17980,1994:756;Caillois 1939b:2856).Seemingly echoing the closing passages fromWebersProtestant Ethic and the Spiri t of Capitalism(19045), Nadeau lyrically

expressed the dialectic of rationalism:

Man makes a beautiful cage to emprison the forces of nature; he succeeds indoing so,but does not realize that he is locking himself inside. No matter howmuch he screams and shakes the bars, the bars resist, for they are the fruit of



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a truly rational, truly perfect labour. Indeed the evil is not in his creations, itis in himself. Man has produced a terrible civilization because he has becomea cerebral monster with hypertrophied rational faculties.

(Nadeau 1964:47)

Rationalization had shackled human beings to what is rather than opening themup to what could or ought to be. Bereft of morality or spirituality, modern indi-viduals had become resigned to living in an eternally recurring present.

Spurred on by the catastrophic atmosphere between the two world wars, theavant-gardes reaction to such a perceived state of affairs was explosive. ModernEuropean society, as well as the instrumental rationality to which it had givenbirth and for which it stood, was put on trial. Calls for the execution of both

came in from all directions. One after the other, Bataille, Caillois, Artaud andBreton directed their rage at rationalism,unleashing a torrent ofhatred for whatit symbolized: the dogma of science, the conformity of culture and the enslave-ment of humankind. Having generated carnage and barbarism on an unprece-dented scale,and running head-first towards another slaughterhouse,how couldEuropean civilization be salvaged, let alone defended? It could not and shouldnot, they responded. We profoundly hope that revolutions, wars, and colonialinsurrections will annihilate this Western civilization whose vermin you defendeven in the Far East,and we call upon this destruction as the state of things leastunacceptable to the mind declares open letter dating from 1925, signed bytwenty-eight surrealists and directed to Paul Claudel, then French Ambassadorto Japan (Nadeau 1964: 238).

This revolt against logics pice de rsistancewas provided by Artaud, whocontended that the cult ofrationalism had brought about Europes decay. Invert-ing evolutionist and developmentalist prejudices, he went so far as to claim thathis own society was culturally backward, surpassed by primitive civilizationswhich had not naively fallen victim to the lure of rationalization (Artaud 1971a:258, 88, 979). Socially and morally bankrupt, European culture was beyondredemption.Before its diseased corpse contaminated the rest of the world, it had

to be eradicated. To quote Bataille, it is necessary to become completelydifferent, or to cease being (1985: 179; see also Breton 1943: 237). Rupture orapocalypse: those were the stark choices posed by the avant-garde.

It opted, of course, for the first of these alternatives. Surrealist aestheticexperiments were designed to push the boundaries of the real and the rationalto their limits and then to violate them, shattering the distinction betweendream, myth and reality as well as between the conscious and the unconscious.Poetry, prose and painting were called upon to undermine instrumental ration-ality, in an effort to loosen its hold upon the mind of the modern subject. Auto-

matic writing and the game of exquisite corpse, for instance, were devised asexpressions ofsubversion of the rationalist tyranny (Breton 1924:26,1930:162,1745, 1934: 113, 1935b:273). To recover its freedom, the human imaginationmust be unchained by means of guerrilla warfare. Yet, regardless ofhow mightyits efforts were,surrealism rapidly understood that its project of the putting into



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question of thecogitowas bound to fail as long as it remained within Europescultural boundaries. Rationalism could not simply implode, for it had becomevirtually indivisible from the modern life-world (Caillois 1938a: 1748). A turn

towards an entirely other world was thus required.Lived through the lens of theFrench school, the encounter with primitiveness provided such an opportunityfor the avant-garde.

Nowhere were the origins of the ethnological subversion of rationalism moreobvious than in Lvy-Bruhls writings, where the primitive acts as a nostalgicmirror image of the modern (Monnerot 1945: 989, 153). Between 1910 and1938, he published no less than six works devoted to the primitive question,arguably contributing more than any other recent thinker to the widely sharedbelief in the absolute incommensurability between Cartesianism and other

modes of thought. Initially advanced inHow Natives Think(1910),Lvy-Bruhlsprincipal claim consisted in establishing a chasm between the mainly alogical,mystical and emotional thinking adopted by primitive peoples and thepredominantly abstract and logical mentality of modern society: whereas theformer saw the world as an anarchic clash of invisible, supernatural forces, thelatter perceived only objective theorems and scientific explanations (Lvy-Bruhl1910: 34, 7, 223, 1922: 2930, 8990).

If Lvy-Bruhls dichotomy created a divide between the two civilizationspredominant forms of thinking, it was not intended to favour one over the other.Rather, they were portrayed as different ways of apprehending the world apoint not lost on surrealism.His work thus aimed to demonstrate the validity ofnon-rationalist viewpoints, whether outside or within Europe itself. Lvy-Bruhls oeuvrecan be read as a warning regarding the dire consequences ofrationalization as well as a plea about the need to preserve the mystical, themythical and the magical in modernity:

as long as human nature continues to have any respect for those tendencieswithin it which have been inherent from the very beginning, it will not evenunder modern conditions be seriously put off by the transparent impossibil-

ities that can be recognized in the mythic world, and will never even dreamof excluding from what it considers to be reality those special insights whichcome to it directly from mystical sources.

(Lvy-Bruhl 1935:2556)

Strict adherence to logic had stripped reality of its richest layers, modern indi-viduals sealing themselves off from (and arrogantly elevating themselves above)their natural surroundings. By contrast, Lvy-Bruhl believed, primitivesocieties are fully awake to the awe-inspiring potential of nature, living inharmony with it while respecting the existence of things beyond the minds

command (Lvy-Bruhl 1935: 19, 23).Why was the primitive mentality in some ways richer than its rationalist

brethren? According to Lvy-Bruhl, because it was not obsessed with causal-ity, finding timeless and universal laws, or generating one-dimensional reason-ing. Instead, it allowed for multiple explanations of a particular phenomenon,



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sometimes in contradiction or opposition to one another. Deemed to be expres-sions ofwonderment at the beyond,powerful emotions were integrated into thefabric ofeveryday life.Further,Lvy-Bruhl claimed,primitive thought accepts

the idea that something may simultaneously take form as an animate and inani-mate being, that dream and waking, the visible and the invisible, the profane andthe sacred live side-by-side (1910:1415,456,51,612,1935:910).Humanitycannot live by logic alone, nor should it strive to do so. In this respect, Lvy-Bruhls vision of the primitive taught the surrealist avant-garde an importantlesson:human liberty and happiness ultimately rely on the vitality of forces (thesupernatural, the sacred, the mystical, etc.) superseding thecogito.

In addition to countering the encroachment of rationalism, the Frenchschools investigations ofprimitiveness can also be interpreted as a mapping out

of the limitations of the Cartesian mentality. Far from being universally appli-cable that is, carrying the ability to demystify all that it touched by renderingcomprehensible what was previously left unexplained through either super-stition or ignorance rationalism was shown to be a parochial development ofEuropean modernity. When confronted with other systems of thought, thisparochialism could be rapidly uncovered. Submerged by the incommensurabil-ity of primitiveness, the Western minds forward march to decipher and extractmeaning out of everything ground to a halt. Lvy-Bruhl, for his part, tirelesslyindicated the shortfalls of logic as a tool ofcross-cultural decipherment.Despitethe most noble intentions, any translation from the mystical to the rational isbound to constitute a betrayal (Lvy-Bruhl 1922: 433), a distortion of originalmeaning caused by the unbridgeable gap between modern and primitive: Wemay try, but anything we are likely to achieve will fall short of rendering themythic world really intelligible. (Rather, the nearer we come to categorizing itrationally, the further we shall be from really knowing it!) (Lvy-Bruhl 1983:50). Even Durkheim and Mauss, otherwise steadfast believers in the interpreta-tive power of modern science, had to acknowledge its inadequacies after comingacross primitive systems of classification. Throughout their jointly authoredessay on this topic, they confess their struggle to make sense of complex yet

unfamiliar mental patterns (Durkheim and Mauss 1903: 30, 57, 67).For the members of the French school, the concept of mana embodied the

alterity of primitive thought, its externality vis--vislogic. Though notoriouslyambiguous and wide-ranging, manadenoted the supernatural and sacred forcecreating all animate and inanimate beings in primitive society; it was the foun-dation of the universe, simultaneously the breath of life and the shadow ofdeath(Durkheim 1912: 59, 26870, 327; Hubert and Mauss 1906: 29, 1005; Lvy-Bruhl 1910: 11416). However, its inner meaning could never be captured bymodern thinking, remaining ultimately indefinable and incomprehensible. In a

celebrated passage from his I ntroduction to the Work of M arcel M auss, Lvi-Strauss explained:

I believe that notions of themanatype, however diverse they may be, andviewed in terms of their most general function (which, as we have seen, has



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not vanished from our mentality and our form of society) represent nothingmore or less than that floating signifierwhich is the disability of all finitethought (but also the surety of all art, all poetry, every mythic and aesthetic

invention), even though scientific knowledge is capable, if not of staunchingit, at least of controlling it partially.(Lvi-Strauss 1950: 63)

Clearly, then, the French schools adoption of the idea ofmanawas designed tocircumscribe rationalisms empire, to delimit areas that it could not conquerbecause inherently limited. In a similar vein, they insisted upon the magicalcontent of the primitive world-view: not that of a neatly ordered and stablecosmos, but, on the contrary, of one defined by chaos, instability and occasional

inscrutability. Mauss additionally focused upon thepotlatch, which he colour-fully termed the monster child of the gift system (19234: 41); thepotlatchstood as the antithesis of rationalized capitalism, involving the frenzied givingand destruction of wealth rather than its careful accumulation and investment(Mauss 19234: 14, 35, 723).

Surrealism was receptive to such ideas,which could be employed to proclaimthe European minds atrophy. By contrast, primitiveness was viewed as a statein which creativity flourished because not brought into the orbit of rationaliz-ation,where imagination runs wild because not tamed by the constraints of logic(Caillois 1939b:2857).Artauds writings on the Tarahumara indigenous peopleof Mexico even condemned Europe to decrepitude, since it was a civilizationenthralled by the disease of thecogitoas well as the creed of scientific progress.Europes rationalist culture has gone bankrupt and I have come onto Mexicanland to look for the foundations ofa magical culture which can still swell up fromIndian soil (Artaud 1971b: 23).10The Tarahumaras represented the onlyremaining pure and vibrant community, one that was still able to nurture magic,myth and the sacred within its bosom (Artaud 1971b: 223, 91, 1971a: 6870,979). In more measured though no less admiring tones,Breton also expoundedthe virtues of the primitive condition. It kindled the aforementioned surreal-

ist quest to confuse dream and waking states, myth and reality, as well as theunconscious and the conscious paths of thinking. In Bretons eyes,primitivenessblended these facets to one another by valuing them equally rather than favour-ing some at the expense of the others. Moreover, primitive cultures were castas the guardians of the ancient wisdom, recognizing magic, myth and the sacredas the principal sources of humankinds acts of aesthetic creation. The greatestworks of art flowed from the magical imagination which primitive peoplesupheld as their highest tenet.

Collectively, the avant-garde thus extended the findings of the French school

to argue for the revival ofEuropes deadened soul. They attempted to reconnectit to a lost mystical spirit. By way of Durkheims, Mausss and Lvy-Bruhlsresearch, the primitive could be reinjected into modern society in order torecover what rationalist culture had wiped away (Artaud 1971b: 1225; Breton1991: 243, 24950; Caillois 1938b; Nadeau 1964: 22930; Monnerot 1945:



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10910). The various surrealist interventions aimed at nothing less than anescape from the cage of rationalization via primitiveness, a phenomenon aboutwhich no less astute a commentator than Bataille was well aware:

Everything Breton has put forward whether it concerns the quest for thesacred, the concern with myths, or rediscovering rituals similar to those ofprimitives represents the exploration of the possibility we again discover,possibility in another sense; this time it is simply a question of exploring allthat can be explored by man, it is a question of reconstituting all that wasfundamental to man before human nature had been enslaved by the necessityfor technical work.

(Bataille 1994: 75)

Bataille himselfwas seduced by the negation ofrationalism presented in Mausssdescription of the potlatchceremony. Thus, the primitive economic systemcould be shown to defy the imperatives of calculation and utility integral toEuropean society. The primitive sense of the sacred, Bataille claimed, wasgenerated through non-productive expenditure excess,waste, thepart maudite(accursed shared), which could never be reconciled with modern capitalismsrequirements of prudent accumulation and expense (Bataille 1985: 11619,1289). Caillois was to make a related point, impressed by the primitivefestivals capacity to conjure up a Dionysian atmosphere in which the violationof habitual rules and norms of conduct was encouraged.11The ceremonies ofprimitive societies, as Caillois interpreted them, had the great merit of cele-brating the irrational by unleashing excessive, odd and destructive ingredientsof socio-cultural life (1938a: 267, 1334, 1939b:3001).

The murder of the sacred

When gazing upon the cultural landscape moulded by modernization, theFrench school and the avant-garde concurred: the rise and progressive

diffusion of rationalism throughout society disenchanted the world. But myth,magic and the sacred had not simply died of their own accord; they had beenkilled by logic and its scientistic accomplices. In the name ofhistorical progressand the advancement of knowledge, a war had been waged against the super-natural and the transcendental, yet the success of the offensive left the lastingimpression of a fall rather than a victory contemplated from the peaks ofenlightenment. Science had been substituted for myth as the privileged modeof interpretation of the world, stripping away the layers of mystery one by oneuntil only a bare carcass remained: We feel that techniques are like seeds which

bore fruit in the soil of magic. Later, magic was dispossessed. Techniquesgradually discarded everything coloured by mysticism. Procedures which stillremain have changed more and more in meaning. Mystical virtues were onceattributed to them. They no longer possess anything but an automatic action(Mauss 1972: 1423). Suffering a worse fate than peripheralization, myth had



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been reduced to falsehood and superstition. A secularized Europe becameengulfed in immanence,having destroyed the potential to stimulate creativity inthe minds of those who inhabited it. Even more worrying for the thinkers who

concern us is the fact that the beauty of the universe had all but disappeared formost individuals; depleted of its supernatural character, the cosmos was ananaemic world in which modern individuals were condemned to wander (Breton1991:5861, 185; Caillois 1938a: 223; Lvy-Bruhl 1910:456, 51, 1935: 878,1879, 255).

Having drawn such conclusions, it occurred to these authors that, for the firsttime anywhere, a completely and utterly profane culture was coming into being Durkheims moral vacuum between the death of old gods and the birth of newones. In the writings of the French school and the avant-garde, the passages

contemplating modern Europes likely fate were haunted by a gothic languageofdecay,atrophy and death.Starkly put: if and when society was to reach a pointof total de-magification, which would stifle the powers of the human imagin-ation, it would inevitably wither away. [M]ystic elements have disappeared asfar as we are concerned, and what we call a myth is but the inanimate corpsewhich remains after the vital spark has fled (Lvy-Bruhl 1910:331). The deathof the sacred was also the ruin, indeed the end, of society as such. Staring intothis dark abyss of an eternal night without dawn, the avant-garde expressedsorrow at what had been left behind and rage towards the murdering parties(Bataille 1994: 48; Caillois 1938a: 150). In turn, Bataille, Artaud, Caillois andBreton declared that the afterglow from the extinction of the sacred dimensionof life was suffocating. No longer counterposed to a transcendental realm, thesphere of everyday life became the sole arena within which the modern selfbelieved himself or herself to be operating;he or she was caught in a sphere ofspiritual barrenness, of the insipid and the commonplace. Without magic,moreover, the very idea of art became difficult to fathom as the organic tiesbonding human beings to nature were severed (Artaud 1971a: 17, 30; Breton1991: 94, 120; Caillois 1939a: 1922, 97). Hence, the surrealist concluded thatthe wisdom of the ages had been foolishly abandoned in the rush towards a

rationalist ethos. Artaud summed up the convictions of many when he turnedthe common view of modernity on its head:

The sixteenth-century Renaissance broke with a reality that had natural,though perhaps suprahuman, laws; and Renaissance humanism was not anennoblement but a diminishing of human beings, since humanity bringsnature back down to its own level rather than elevating itself toward the latter.The exclusive consideration of what is human has destroyed the natural.

(Artaud 1971a: 80)12

What should not be forgotten is that the avant-gardes evocation of modernEuropes plight of disenchantment was sparked by their sociological pre-decessors interest in the enchanted universe of primitive cultures. Indeed,Durkheim, Mauss and Lvy-Bruhl placed magic, myth and the sacred at the



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heart of primitiveness, the engine ensuring societys reproduction and tremen-dous vitality.Faith in a supernatural realm populated by gods and spirits enabledprofane life to take on a significance beyond the mundane and the visible. Both

movements examined particular primitiverituals and creeds,such as magic andsacrifice, which built bridges between the transcendental and the immanentrealms. Supported by faith in mystical powers, magical phenomena werebelieved to reconcile human beings with the divine; magic summoned andtemporarily harnessed natures sacred powers to assist inner-worldly designs(Hubert and Mauss 19023:1516,246,85).Sacrificial practices, for their part,were depicted as vehicles through which the primitive community enactedcontact with the beyond.The offering of a victim to the gods marked an admis-sion that life itself was outside human control. Only such an explicit acknow-

ledgement, repeated at regular intervals, could quell supernatural wrath.Contrary to what occurred in modern society, ordinary individuals couldthereby rise above their everyday status by fleetingly touching the gods.Anothercontrasting feature of primitive existence that drew our authorsattention wasthe unquestioned pre-eminence of the sacred over the profane. Giving meaningand determining the direction ofdaily life, the former innately reigned over thelatter (Artaud 1971a: 25, 43, 77; Hubert and Mauss 1898: 12, 75, 97100; 1906:1517; Lvy-Bruhl 1935: 279).

Moreover, the enchanting consequences of primitive animism, originallydenoted by the French school, were also highlighted by the avant-garde. As aresult, the spiritual wealth of the primitive universe was viewed with envy; alllocales and things, from stones to trees to animals, could be endowed withsacredness. In fact, the sacred saturated the communitys activities. Far frombeing restricted to one or two categories of beings, then, the domain of totemicreligion extends to the farthest limits of the known universe. Like the religionofGreece, it places the divine everywhere. The well-known formula everythingis full of gods13 can serve as its motto as well (Durkheim 1912: 155). Overall,then, primitive peoples were seen to have had access to a richer and morecomplex reality, precisely because their economic, social and cultural existence

was predominantly geared towards the sacred, the magical and the mythical(Artaud 1971a: 1416, 49; Hubert and Mauss 1898: 81, 19023: 25, 96; Lvy-Bruhl 1910: 2531, 1923: 323, 1927: 2636, 1949: 1023).

Anomie and the struggle against the dissolution of society

Durkheims pioneering analysis of anomic suicide caused by a societal lapse inmoral regulation (1897:258) was to be generalized as a diagnosis of the modern

predicament by those who followed in his tracks. The inter-war period was tobe cast as the age of anomie, of individuals cut adrift from collective standardsbecause living in a rationalized, disenchanted and consequently fragmentedsocial environment. The murder of the sacred, magic and myth was perceivedto threaten equally the collective consciousness of society, thereby plunging it



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into a state nearing dissolution. The Durkheimians claimed that the unrivalleddomination of market relations in modern Europe was one of the major factorsprecipitating this anomic crisis.An excessive,even predatory, individualism bent

on maximizing self-interest at all costs became modernitys moral code:

As all other beliefs and practices assume less and less religious a character, theindividual becomes the object of a sort of religion. We carry on the worshipof the dignity of the human person, which, like all strong acts ofworship,hasalready acquired its superstitions. If you like, therefore it is indeed a commonfaith. Yet first of all it is only possible because of the collapse of other faithsand consequently it cannot engender the same results as that multiplicity ofextinct beliefs. There is no compensation.

(Durkheim 1893:122)

Society had been converted into a vast marketplace, the haphazard regrouping ofmonadic, pleasure-maximizing and self-serving homines oeconomici(Durkheim1897: 2545, 1950: 1013; Mauss 19234: 735). At another level, the Frenchschool worried that the de-magification and de-sacralization of society endan-gered its traditions, that is to say,beliefs and practices transmitted generationallyto maintain social cohesion. Thus, it was claimed that, from the moment indi-viduals began to perceive themselves as ex nihilo, the survival of collectiverepresentations binding them to the social whole could no longer be ensured(Lvy-Bruhl 1910: 327; Mauss 1934: 3301, 335).

Hostile to a generalized anomie, Durkheims, Mausss and Lvy-Bruhlspronounced sociocentric bias constituted a pivotal point of reference for sur-realism. Interest in myths and the various religious activities of exotic peoplesdrew attention to the superiority of collective over individual creation, andthereby to sociology and ethnography, in particular the Durkheimian theorydefining religious activities and myths as a manifestation of a collective beingsuperior to the individual and named society (Bataille 1994: 104). The Collgede sociologie was particularly troubled by the anomic state of affairs pinpointed

by its forebears. Nothing less than the foundations of society were at stake(Bataille 1985: 242; Caillois 1938a: 151, 1939a: 1334). The brave new world ofsecular logic had undermined the conditions for recreating communal experi-ences, making only banal and atomistic forms of expression available tohumankind. Caillois was to capture the essence of this disaggregation of thesocial through his contrast between the primitive festival and the modernvacation. Is a society with no festivals not a society condemned to death? Whilesuffering from the gnawing feeling of suffocation vaguely provoked in everyoneby their absence, is not the ephemeral pleasure of vacation one of those false

senses of well-being that mask death throes from the dying? (Caillois 1939b:302) T he vacation was but a bland, individualistic variation of everyday life hardly the kind of transgressive communal energy emanating from the primevalfestival.14More broadly,collective effervescence waned in a social context whichwas believed to be incapable of rejuvenating itself through cultural paroxysm or



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normative reinvention. Exhausted by its own lust for rationalism and disen-chantment, modern European society would rot.

The French school was vividly to oppose modern Europes anomic situation

to what Durkheim identified as the strength of mechanical solidarity prevailingin primitive settings. There, cultural homogeneity supported by the lack ofdifferentiation between individuals was said to create a vibrant collectiveconsciousness as well as a powerful sense of social cohesion. In other words, theprimacy ofthe community over the selfwas unchallenged (the latter notion beingdevoid of meaning). Individuals could not learn to view themselves as distinctentities nor could they conceive of their predominance over the common good;the group provided them with a sense of meaning and belonging (Durkheim1893:838;Lvy-Bruhl 1927:1516,678,2012).According to the Durkheimi-

ans, the intensity of collective life in primitive cultures made itself apparentduring sacred rituals.Hence, their detailed studies ofmagic and sacrifice adopteda sociocentric framework designed to counter the prevailing individualisticinterpretations of these phenomena. If superficially appearing to originate fromthe actions of a single charismatic personality (magician, sorcerer, shaman, etc.),magical and sacrificial practices represented communal customs. They enacted asocietys traditions and collective representations to enable its reproduction.Eventhe economic sphere, in primitive social life, was subordinated to the require-ments of solidarity; the gift economy, as Mauss explained it, was an elaboratesystem of obligation and reciprocity whose ultimate purpose was the mainten-ance ofsocio-cultural ties between extended kin units.All in all, primitiveexist-ence was structured by participation in a series of common rites reaffirmingsocietys shared moral norms and beliefs (Beuchat and Mauss 19045: 4447;Durkheim 1897: 170, 1912: 349, 150, 18993, 21621, 3514, 4025, 4101,41517, 4247, 4478; Hubert and Mauss 1898: 1023, 1906: 1719, 256;Mauss 19234:35,10). In their more extreme variations,such as festivals,sacredrituals were believed to induce the individuals melting into the group. Bodies,minds and souls temporarily came together into an indistinguishable mass:

The whole social body comes alive with the same movement.They all become,in a manner of speaking, parts of a machine or, better, spokes of a wheel. . . .The rhythmic movement, uniform and continuous, is the immediate expres-sion of a mental state, in which the consciousness of each individual is over-whelmed by a single sentiment, a single hallucinatory idea, a commonobjective. Each body shares the same passion, each face wears the same mask,each voice utters the same cry . . . everyone is carried away, there is no possi-bility of resistance, by the conviction of the whole group. All the people aremerged in the excitement of the dance. In their feverish agitation they become

but one body, one soul.(Mauss 1972:133)15

By comparison to such moments of collective effervescence, modern Europecould not but appear anomic, a society barely limping forward, crushed by the



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combined weight of rationalization, de-magification and radical individualism.What, then, could be done? At a basic level, Lvy-Bruhl, Durkheim and Maussrecalled modernitys Janus-faced character. Magic, myth and the sacred necess-

arily inhabited European societies, which were still far from being the crystal-lization of a pure cogitotransparent to itself. PaceComte, modern scienceremained indebted to magical and religious thought,whereas the mythical world-view informed European fairy tales and legends (Durkheim 1912: 8, 24; Hubertand Mauss 19023: 137; Lvy-Bruhl 1910: 3434, 1949: 1001, 1935: 2527).Apart from this reminder, however, the Durkheimians sought to nurture civicforms ofcollective morality and social integration suited to the modern age.Soli-darity was to be recreated by way of popular gatherings and assemblies, publiceducation, as well as an institution-building process emerging from professional

associations (Durkheim 1912: 20813, 21516, 3512, 4247, 42930, 1922:6972, 1235, 133, 1950: 7, 1215, 289, 468; Mauss 19234: 667).These ideas were to influence the avant-gardes own varied responses to

modernitys anomic crisis.Communal aesthetic projects were one ofsurrealismshallmarks, a concrete demonstration of the superiority of collective modes ofexpression over their isolated variants; as Breton explained, it was a method ofcreating a collective myth (1935a: 210).16And,according to Artaud (1971a: 52,1971b:1225),modern civilizations only path to salvation from atomistic trendslay in returning to its communal origins so as to bond again with nature andothers.The Collge de sociologie can itself be read as a Durkheimian institutionbent on combating anomie.After all, its opening statement described the Collgeas a moral community whose purpose was to re-enchant and re-sacralizemodern society by way of a sacred sociology (Ambrosino et al. 1937: 5). Themeans through which it pursued this mission also matched the Durkheimianpath, though its mimesis of primitive rituals went further than its predecessorshad contemplated. The Collge thus modelled itself on primitive sacredsocieties, its meetings acting as catalysts for the release of communal energies.Bataille, Caillois and their colleagues were self-styled sorcerers apprentices,shamans who attempted to spread the virus ofcollective effervescence through-

out the body social (Bataille 1937: 74; Caillois 1938c:42, 1938d: 153).17

Coda:the dialectic of primitiveness

During the inter-war period in Europe, the French sociological traditionscritical interpretation of modern Europe through the lens of the primitivecondition became one of the axes of the surrealist avant-gardes own question-ing of some of the dominant socio-cultural tendencies set free by the Renais-

sance and the Enlightenment. Indeed, Lvy-Bruhls, Mausss and Durkheimsinvestigations of primitiveness provided Bataille, Artaud, Caillois, Breton andother orthodox or dissident surrealists with alternative cultural horizonsthrough which a certain distancevis--vismodernity could be achieved; beinggeographically situated as well as confronted with other possible modes ofsocial



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order, the move towards rationalization, disenchantment and anomie couldtherefore not be falsely universalized or naturalized. For the avant-garde, thesetrends came out of a specific, flawed combination of circumstances a combi-

nation which could be undone through social and aesthetic interventions createdto re-enchant, re-mythologize and re-sacralize modern society. Taking its cuefrom the French schools observations although arriving at more radicalconclusions than its sociological forebears had been willing to draw surrealismstrove to reinsert primitiveness at the core of the modern experience; in someinstances, this meant the virtual metamorphosis of modernity into the primi-tive condition.

Was this feasible and, more importantly, should it have been considered so? Itshould be mentioned, if only in passing, that the notion of modern primitive-

ness was built upon a performative contradiction of the first order. Since theadvent of the modern epochs anthropocentric and rationalist tenets, self-consciousness about myth and magics fictional character had graduallydestroyed their very essence. Paradoxically, only by using rationality could theidea of operating outside its limits be contemplated. There was no escape fromour fallen condition. Having eaten from the tree of knowledge, we could neverreturn to the primeval garden of pre-logical innocence (Bataille 1994: 789;Hollier 1979: 1213).

More worrying was the fact that Europes slipping into the darkness of theSecond World War embodied the tragic spectacle which Horkheimer andAdorno were to identify in Dialectic of Enlightenment(1944): the reversion ofenlightenment into myth, the perversion of reason through the re-enchantmentof the world. Under Nazisms cloak, the revival of mythical beliefs and collec-tive rituals prospered within Europe like never before. Savagery was not anattribute to be searched for in distant lands, for it had always lived at the heartof modernity itself. The cunning of history had struck again. Belatedly realiz-ing the extent to which the Durkheimians sociocentric vision had beencorrupted, Mauss admitted as much as the beast of fascism awoke across theRhine. In a letter dating from 1936 he confessed that [t]his return to the primi-

tive had not been the object of our reflections. Three years later, he was towrite that I think all this is a tragedy for us, too forceful a confirmation of thingswe had pointed out and the proofthat we should have expected this confirmationby evil rather than a confirmation by good (quoted in Aron 1983:71).18In 1942,even Breton, not known for the moderation of his statements, asked a questionwhich had haunted avant-garde circles:What should one think of the postulatethere is no society without a social myth? in what measure can we choose oradopt, and impose, a myth fostering the society that we judge to be desirable?(Breton 1942:2878). Alas, the Hegelian owl of Minerva had once again spread

its wings only with the falling of the dusk.Let me conclude by following up on Durkheims remark with which this

paper opened. Recast in the shadow of Heideggers (1977) pronouncement thatonly a god can save us now, the sentence from The Elementary Forms ofReligious L ifetakes on the appearance of an ominous forewarning; as we know,



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for some a new god had been born in the person of the Fhrer. In hindsight,perhaps we can allow ourselves to put a slightly extravagant turn on Durkheimscomment: the former gods are growing old or dying, and others shouldnot be

born.May they rest in peace or remain stillborn while our work amid the rubblebegins anew: a lesson which avant-gardes of all sorts have learnt at their periland which the rest of us may do well to heed as we contemplate the future ofmodern society by exploring other epochs and cultures.

Acknowledgements

Research and writing of this article were made possible by a CommonwealthFellowship and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Postdoctoral Fellowship (75620000316). I should like to thank Peter Beilharz,Mike Gane, Frank Pearce, as well as the anonymous referees for Economy andSocietyfor their comments and suggestions.

Notes

1 Although accentuating different features, all the authors considered here coalesce intheir basic understanding of modernity: a historical epoch which began with thesixteenth-century intellectual Renaissance of Western Europe. For them, it is character-ized by anthropocentrism (the substitution of God by humanity at the centre of theuniverse), rationalism (the domination of the Cartesiancogitoover other forms of thoughtand action), as well as individualism (the pre-eminence of the individual subject over thecommunity). I use the term primitiveness to designate the French school and the avant-gardes shared representations of the indigenous peoples of Latin America, Africa andOceania.Of course, the notion of the primitive is extremely problematic given its evolu-tionist connotations. Throughout this paper, it is treated as a mythical construct thatis,not as an accuratedescription ofthe cultures to which it refers, but as a creed createdby European thinkers to make sense of their own societiespast, present and future.2 The opening statement of the Collge de sociologie formulated such a reproach:science has been too limited to the analysis of so-called primitive societies,while ignoringmodern societies (Ambrosinoet al. 1937:5). More often than not, Durkheims, Mausssand Lvy-Bruhls investigations referred to the primitive condition as an alternativecultural horizon, a reminder of what had been lost through modernization.3 Although surrealism was the most prominent artistic avant-garde present in Parisduring the inter-war period, this is not to suggest that it was the only one or even theonly one to produce a critique ofmodernity. Indeed,all modernist avant-gardes have beencharacterized by their ambivalence towards the modern epoch.4 FreudsCivi li zati on and I ts Discontents(1929) is probably the most famous responseto this prevailing EuropeanZeitgeistduring the inter-war period.5 In 1925, Mauss, Lvy-Bruhl and Rivet founded the Institute of Ethnology at theUniversity of Paris. However, by 1927, Lvy-Bruhl had broken with the Durkheimianschool and left the Institute,where Mauss remained (Bunzel 1966:viii;Lvi-Strauss 1945:510). Criticizing Lvy-Bruhls opposition ofmodern (scientific) and primitive (religious)thought, Durkheim writes: I, on the contrary, judge that these two forms of humanmentality, as different as they may be, are far from arising from different sources;they areborn one of the other and are two stages of a single evolution (Durkheim 1913: 147).



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6 Lvy-Bruhl addressed the first point in his later writings, emphasizing the fact thatmystical and logical forms of thinking are found in both primitive and civilized societies.Nonetheless, the second criticism was never tackled by him.7 The squabbling among the surrealists the expulsions, vitriolic denunciations and

vicious attacks is well known and documented; see, for instance, Nadeau (1964).8 In 1939, as the Collge de sociologie was dissolving due to internal conflicts, MichelLeiris wrote a letter to Bataille expressing his discomfort about the relationship betweentheir own experiment and the Durkheimians:

Far be it from me to want to make the College into a scholarly society where one woulddevote oneself to research in pure sociology. But, in the end, we have to choose, and ifwe take sociological science as it has been established by men like Durkheim, Mauss,and Robert Hertz as our reference, it is essential to stick to their methods. Otherwise,in order to clear up any ambiguity, we have to stop calling ourselves sociologists.

(quoted in Hollier 1979:355)

9 Of course, this is not to suggest that Weber focuses solely on Zweckrationali tt(purposive-instrumental rationality), since his typology also includes value-rational(wertrational), affectual and traditional forms ofsocial action (Weber 1956:245). For itspart, however, the surrealist avant-garde principally focused on the first type, believingthat the others had become subordinated to it in Europe (as opposed to the situation inprimitive societies).10 The translation is my own. Artaud travelled to Mexico in 1936, both to deliver aseries of lectures and to join the ceremonies of the Tarahumaras.11 Cailloiss argument was clearly indebted to NietzschesBirth of Tragedy(1872).12 The translation is my own.13 Durkheim (1912) wrote the saying in ancient Greek in the original text.

14 The second edition of CailloissLHomme et le sacr(published in 1950 and trans-lated asMan and the Sacred[1959]) revised his original argument (found in the firstFrench edition of1939): it was no longer the vacation,but war which had taken the placeof the festival in modern society. No doubt the Second World War loomed large in hisreassessment.15 See also Durkheim (1912: 3867).16 See also Bataille (1994: 77) and Monnerot (1945: 44, 1045).17 In the late 1930s, mainly through the vehicle ofAcphale(which acted as both ajournal and a secret society), Bataille concocted elaborate plans to recreate sacred ritualsin Paris. Among the strangest were a celebration of Louis XVIs beheading on the Placede la Concorde and a human sacrifice. Neither one of these ideas came to fruition (see

Hollier 1979; Richardson 1994).18 The original reference is found in Hollier (1979: xxiiixxiv).

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