Primitive America - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Primitive America write by Paul Smith. This book was released on 2007. Primitive America available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. One of the most confounding aspects of American society—the one that perhaps most frequently perplexes observers both domestic and foreign—is the vast contradiction between what anthropologists might term the “hot” and “cold” elements in the culture. The hot encompasses the dynamic and progressive aspects of a society dedicated to growth and productivity, marked by mobility, innovation, and optimism. In contrast, the cold embodies rigid social forms and archaic beliefs, fundamentalisms of all kinds, racism and xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, cultural atavism, and ignorance—in short, the primitive. For cultural critic Paul Smith, the tension between progressive and primitive is a constitutive condition of American history and culture. In Primitive America, Smith contemplates this primary contradiction as it has played out in the years since 9/11. Indeed, he writes, much of what has happened since—events that have seemed to many to be novel and egregious—can be explained by this foundational dialectic. More radically still, Primitive America attests that this underlying stress is driven by America's unquestioned devotion to the elemental propositions and processes of capitalism. This devotion, Smith argues, has become America's quintessential characteristic, and he begins this book by elaborating on the idea of the primitive in America—its specific history of capital accumulation, commodity fetishism, and cultural narcissism. Smith goes on to track the symptoms of the primitive that have arisen in the aftermath of 9/11 and the commencement of the “Long War” against “violent extremists”: the nature of American imperialism, the status of the U.S. Constitution, the militarization of America's economy and culture, and the Bush administration's disregard for human rights. An urgent and important engagement with current American policies and practices, Primitive America is, at the same time, an incisive critique of the ideology that fuels the ethos of America's capitalist culture. Paul Smith is professor of cultural studies at George Mason University and the author of numerous books, including Clint Eastwood: A Cultural Production (Minnesota, 1993).
American Primitive
American Primitive - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook American Primitive write by Mary Oliver. This book was released on 1983-04-30. American Primitive available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry Her most acclaimed volume of poetry, American Primitive contains fifty visionary poems about nature, the humanity in love, and the wilderness of America, both within our bodies and outside. "American Primitive enchants me with the purity of its lyric voice, the loving freshness of its perceptions, and the singular glow of a spiritual life brightening the pages." -- Stanley Kunitz "These poems are natural growths out of a loam of perception and feeling, and instinctive skill with language makes them seem effortless. Reading them is a sensual delight." -- May Swenson
Creation Myths of Primitive America In relation to the Religious History and Mental Development of Mankind
Creation Myths of Primitive America In relation to the Religious History and Mental Development of Mankind - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Creation Myths of Primitive America In relation to the Religious History and Mental Development of Mankind write by Jeremiah Curtin. This book was released on 2020-09-28. Creation Myths of Primitive America In relation to the Religious History and Mental Development of Mankind available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. ÊThe American creation myths, as far as we know them, form simply a series of accounts of the conflicts, happenings, and various methods by which the first world was changed into the world now existing. This change was effected in various ways. In the myths of certain tribes or nations, it is mainly by struggles between hostile personages. One god of great power and character overcomes a vast number of opponents, and changes each into some beast, bird, plant, or insect; but always the resultant beast or other creature corresponds in some power of mind or in some leading quality of character with the god from whose position it has fallen. In certain single cases opponents are closely matched, they are nearly equal in combat; the struggle between them is long, uncertain, and difficult. At last, when one side is triumphant, the victor says, ÒHereafter you will be nothing but a ÑÑÓ; and he tells what the vanquished is to be. But at this point the vanquished turns on the victor and sends his retort like a Parthian arrow, ÒYou will be nothing but a ÑÑÓ; and he declares what his enemy is to be. The metamorphosis takes place immediately on both sides, and each departs in the form which the enemy seemed to impose, but which really belonged to him. There are cases in which the hero transforms numerous and mighty enemies indirectly through a special wish which he possesses. For example, a certain myth hero brings it about that a large company of the first people are invited to a feast, and while all are eating with great relish he slips out unnoted, walks around the house, and utters, as he goes, the magic formula: ÒI wish the walls of this house to be flint, the roof also.Ó Next moment the whole house is flint-walled, the roof is flint also. After that he says, ÒI wish this house to be red-hot.Ó It is red-hot immediately. His enemies inside are in a dreadful predicament; they rush about wildly, they roar, they look for an opening; there is none, they see no escape, they find no issue. Their heads burst from heat. Out of one head springs an owl, and flies away through the smoke-hole; out of another a buzzard, which escapes through the same place; out of the third comes a hawk, which follows the other two; out of a fourth some other bird. Thus the action continues till every head in the flint house bursts open and lets out its occupant. All fly away, and thus the whole company is metamorphosed. Each turns into that which his qualities called for, which his nature demanded; he becomes outwardly and visibly that which before he had been internally and in secret.
Creation Myths of Primitive America
Creation Myths of Primitive America - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Creation Myths of Primitive America write by Jeremiah Curtin. This book was released on 2014-06-02. Creation Myths of Primitive America available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Mr. Jeremiah Curtin's book was his first on the unwritten mental productions of primitive America. It contains twenty long myths taken down word for word by him from Indians who knew no religion nor language save their own, and the chief of whom had not seen a white man until years of maturity. These myths are all of remarkable beauty and exceptional value; among the more noteworthy is "Olelbis," containing an account of the creation of the heavenly house in the Central Blue, the highest point in the sky above us. In this mythis described also the great World Fire which was extinguished by a flood; and next a reconstruction of the face of the earth, which gave the form existing at present. In addition to their intrinsic beauty, these masterpieces of the primitive human mind in America antedate by many ages the earliest forms of thought represented to us in the records of Egypt and Assyria, hence their value may be easily inferred; they explain to us things which had become unintelligible to the priests of Egypt and Assyria in the religious systems which they themselves taught and studied. The volume contains an elaborate introduction and all necessary notes
American Primitive
American Primitive - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook American Primitive write by Roger Ricco. This book was released on 1988. American Primitive available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Contains photos of over 400 pieces of American primitive sculpture.
