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<blockquote data-quote="Malmuria" data-source="post: 8340169" data-attributes="member: 7030755">The OED lists several usages.&nbsp; Prior to the late 18th century, &quot;primitive&quot; only referred to something foundational, as opposed to &quot;derivative.&quot; e.g. the primitive church.&nbsp; It only comes to denote contemporaries living in an 'early stage in time' in the late 18th century and only in the context of British encounters with native peoples.&nbsp; That is, to the extent that word refers to difference in technology in human societies, it is intrinsically tied to the colonial encounter, and the belief among Europeans that traveling in space meant a kind of traveling back in time, as Johannes Fabian puts it.&nbsp;&nbsp; If the word has a more generic usage separate from its origin in the colonial encounter, as evinced by your preferred usage, that is a later development, one that develops past or forgets its originary usage. Through the nineteenth and early-mid twentieth centuries, the word was inseparable from a derogatory usage, one emanating from a mindset of European superiority in all things.&nbsp; This extended to the arts, where it was assumed that the material culture of Africa was crude and rudimentary compared to Europe, which caused no small amount of confusion when colonialists discovered, for example, Benin bronze sculptures, which european scholars had to assume actually came from ancient greece due to their existing prejudices (cf Annie Coombes' Reinventing Africa).&nbsp; As I indicated previously, the adventure refers less to the technology of the Grippli, and more to their &quot;primitive decorations,&quot; ie their art and culture.&nbsp; Your level of defensiveness around this topic, as if a fantasy adventure could not possibly involve and invoke colonial relationships, is simply absurd.&nbsp; Especially as it was the explicit intention of the author to upend these kind of relationships, only for them to be reinserted via a white, established editor.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Malmuria, post: 8340169, member: 7030755"] The OED lists several usages. Prior to the late 18th century, "primitive" only referred to something foundational, as opposed to "derivative." e.g. the primitive church. It only comes to denote contemporaries living in an 'early stage in time' in the late 18th century and only in the context of British encounters with native peoples. That is, to the extent that word refers to difference in technology in human societies, it is intrinsically tied to the colonial encounter, and the belief among Europeans that traveling in space meant a kind of traveling back in time, as Johannes Fabian puts it. If the word has a more generic usage separate from its origin in the colonial encounter, as evinced by your preferred usage, that is a [B]later[/B] development, one that develops past or forgets its originary usage. Through the nineteenth and early-mid twentieth centuries, the word was inseparable from a derogatory usage, one emanating from a mindset of European superiority in all things. This extended to the arts, where it was assumed that the material culture of Africa was crude and rudimentary compared to Europe, which caused no small amount of confusion when colonialists discovered, for example, Benin bronze sculptures, which european scholars had to assume actually came from ancient greece due to their existing prejudices (cf Annie Coombes' [I]Reinventing Africa[/I]). As I indicated previously, the adventure refers less to the technology of the Grippli, and more to their "primitive decorations," ie their art and culture. Your level of defensiveness around this topic, as if a fantasy adventure could not possibly involve and invoke colonial relationships, is simply absurd. Especially as it was the explicit intention of the author to upend these kind of relationships, only for them to be reinserted via a white, established editor. [/QUOTE]

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