Panel 6

How are mediated discourses of the “primitive,” of wildness and wilderness, the ancient and archaic, the ecstatic and ineffable, best approached in our hyper-technological society? The “primitive” is arguably no longer confined as it once was to critiques through the lenses of post-colonialism and race theory, as it is now constantly reformulated, re-sited, parodied, and invoked to various discursive ends. How are these pervasive themes best treated? How are they related to the alienation effects of a mass consumer and technological society? What do they say about our relation to various spaces (urban and rural) and the “natural” world?