Prehistories of the Future

"This is an unusually rich, subtle, and rewarding collection that brings varied approaches to a crucial topic in modern cultural history. . . . The essays recognize the multi-faceted and complicated nature of the fin-de-siècle conundrum of modernism and primitivism."—Michael P. Steinberg, Cornell University

• Introduction Elazar Barkan and Ronald Bush; Part I. Savage Anxieties: 1. The presence of the past: ethnographic thinking/literary politics Ronald Bush; 2. Savage crowds, modernism, and modern politics Robert Nye; 3. Victorian promiscuity: Greek ethics and primitive exemplars Elazar Barkan; Part II. Raw Anthropology: 4. The moment of prestidigitation: magic, illusion and mana in the thought of Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss Vincent Crapanzano; 5. Patterns of strangeness: Franz Boas, modernism, and the origins of anthropology Julia E. Liss; Part III. Victorian Vertigo: 6. In a glass darkly: photography, the premodern, and Victorian horror Joss Lutz Marsh; Part IV. (Ethno)graphic Images: 7. Manipulated images: European photographs of Pacific peoples Virgina-Lee Webb; 8. Travel engravings and the construction of the primitive Christopher B. Steiner; 9. Gauguin's French baggage: decadence and colonialism in Tahiti Nancy Perloff; 10. Modernism's African mask: the Stein-Pica sso collaboration Michael North; Part V. Culture and Displacements: 11. The kind of person you have to sound like to sing 'Alexander's Ragtime Band' Robert Dawidoff; 12. Primitive self: colonial impulses in Michel Leiris's L'Afrique fantome Marie-Denise Shelton; 13. Tolerance and taboo: modernist primitivisms and postmodernist pieties Marjorie Perloff; Part VI. Modernism Reconsidered: 14. Modernism, postmodernism and explanation Frank Kermode; Notes; Index.