ANARCHO-PRIMITIVISM IN D.H. LAWRENCE’S POST WAR FICTION: AN ECO-CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

Eco-criticism is an emerging area of investigation in literary and critical studies aiming at the analysis of the role and representation of nature and environment in literary works. Eco-critics speak for nature which, they believe, is silenced, and oppressed by anthropocentric mindset and human lust for profit and comfort. Critique of modern industrial civilization and celebration of pre-colonial primitive cultures are the important concerns in the contemporary eco-critical discourse. Anarchism aims at the eradication of modern civilization, advocating the restoration of pre-modern and pre-egalitarian primitive mode of existence. Anarcho-primitivism, combining anarchists’ distrust for modern civilization and authoritarianism with primitivists’ interest in simple and primitive mode of living, involves a critique of modern industrial civilization, advocating a return to non-civilized primitive ways of life. Anarchist and anarcho-primitivist elements are perceptible in Lawrence’s post-war fiction which exudes his aversion for modern industrial civilization for its barrenness, decay and sterility, and its unspeakable damage to the natural environment, and his predilection for non- European primitive cultures and societies which, in comparison to dead European existence, present a better alternative with their vitality and healthier mode of existence. This paper, by adopting the qualitative research method and using the key concepts of the representative anarchist, primitivist and ecocritical thinkers as theoretical framework, has attempted to analyse anarcho-primitivism in Lawrence’s post-war fiction from ecocritical perspective.

Keywords: Eco-criticism, Anarchism, Primitivism, Anarcho-primitivism, Future primitive