Literary Ethnology Modernism, Primitivism and the First World War

The discovery of primitive art and civilization in France and Germany around 1 9 0 0 meant a serious disruption of modernity in terms of both theory and artistic practice. At a time of widespread disillusionment with modernity, ethnology emerged as a key discipline for arts and literature. Robert Musil was deeply involved in the novel ethnology of contemporary society. A combination of primitivism and gestaltpsychology informed his attempt to understand the world, including the outbreak of unprecedented violence in World War I. This specific perspective distanced Musil and other modernist writers from the common interpretation of the war as a catastrophe. In his novel and essays he conceived the war as a period characterized by a simultaneity of rationality and magic, leading to productive destruction.