The Languages of Difference: American Writers and Anthropologists Reconfigure the Primitive, 1878-1940

A retired American scholar of English, Martin discusses the attempts of a few quite original writers and scientists during the period to counter the prevalent, seemingly self-evident notions of the primitive and the human difference that term implies, and to discover more subtle and human alternatives. Their struggles toward understanding were ingenious accretions of insight, method, and language he says, but their results cannot stand as definitive because the process of reconceiving those who …