Abstract: The Expressionist and Primitivist movements are a contentious center point in the argument between those who favor "realist", "useful" art and those who value modernist art. Some berate Expressionists for their inability to take a political stand while others argue that their art finds a deeper truth than "realist" works ever could. While the two camps are thoroughly entrenched, a recent work allows for a new approach. Deleuze and Guattari, in their work on Kafka, have illuminated a rhetorical escape from the enclosed system and have, in doing so, given us a new way to perceive Expressionism and primitivism in art movements. Rather than viewing the movements from a position on the axis between realism and modernism, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, shows us how we can view them as attempts to escape the machinations of society. Dissertation Discovery Company and University of Florida are dedicated to making scholarly works more discoverable and accessible throughout the world. This dissertation, "Becoming-Expressionist-animal" by Brendan Patrick Riley, was obtained from University of Florida and is being sold with permission from the author. A digital copy of this work may also be found in the university's institutional repository, IR@UF. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation.