I'm fascinated by Graeber and Wengrow's description of Medieval seasonal festivals providing an opportunity for peasant's to lampoon the monarchy and so maintain "political self conciousness". And trace the tradition of clowns throughout history that subverted the status quo. "The first kings may well have been play kings. Then they became real kings."
My kids love watching this episode and playing the game[...]
I'm reading "The Dawn of everything - A new History of Humanity" by David Wengrow and David Graeber at the moment. Graeber is spot on: it IS mind altering to know that our ancestors developed complex societies without hierarchy, and these societies built cities. Some of our ancestors lived in societies that adopted hierarchy only to leave it behind.
#TheDawnofEverything
#books
#GraeberWengrow
#anarchism
#history
Nuevo ídolo: Kondiaronk.
https://www.sinpermiso.info/textos/la-sabiduria-de-kandiaronk
En este texto inédito, el antropólogo David Graeber y el arqueólogo David Wengrwow muestran que la ideología del progreso fue una reacción conservadora contra la difusión de las ideas de Kandiaronk, una especie de Sócrates amerindio, para justificar las desigualdades occidentales.El antropólogo David Graeber (DG) trabajaba desde hacía siete años con el arqueólogo David Wengrwow (DW) en una obra consagrada a la historia de las desigualdades. Un primer apunte de esta obra se publicó en 2018.
Oh - I have to confess profound ignorance too. I read some Levi-Strauss in my youth - but more in the process of getting to grips with structuralism, than exploring anthropology - and I read #GraeberWengrow recently - but other than that, and the occasional Guardian article, I know nothing.
When you've been raised to think that everything is a hammer or a nail then you can erroneously think that there can be only hammers and nails.
Then Wengrowe and Graeber show up.
Also interesting that #GraeberWengrow rightly trace the origin of 'what we understand as left/right divisions' to the seating positions in the French National Assembly at the start of the French Revolution (aristocrats on the right, commoners on the left) - but only in terms of 'the formation of left-wing thought' - missing the crucial point that this division was grounded not primarily in ideas, but in the very real economic fact that those on the right actually held privilege and power in the status quo - those on the left didn't.
It's this reality we need to keep strongly in mind in this age of identity politics.
Anyone else reading Graeber & Wengrow's 'Dawn of Everything' at the moment ?
I'm part-way through. The first sections are a wonderful antidote to the Eurocentric view that modern conceptions of 'liberté, égalité et fraternité' originated in the European Enlightenment, and were spread throughout the world by European colonists (the book assembles a vast amount of evidence for the reverse process - that it was precisely early encounters with indigenous societies and their ideas in the 17th and 18th centuries that shaped the Enlightenment).
However, I am wondering if, in its justified ambition to redress the Eurocentric distortion, the authors go too far the other way, and neglect aspects of the European tradition. Most of the examples of influential interactions with indigenous cultures are actually drawn from the late 17th and early 18th centuries. But there is (so far) no mention of the English Revolution and the ideas of the Levellers etc that go back way earlier (the designation 'Levellers' goes back to 1607, and has it's origin in protests against enclosures - it refers to the destruction of field boundaries, not to social equality - it was about 'the commons' vs private property - and there is a traceable line of influence right back, via Wycliffe and the Lollards, to the 14th century Peasants' Revolt and the primitive communism of John Ball, etc - the very inception of capitalism generating its own resistance).
Perhaps in their focus on our freedom to imagine alternative societies, and the power of ideas, the authors have neglected the central insight of Marx - that it is not ideas alone. but the interaction of our thoughts and actions with the way we win our livelihoods (the economy) that determines the future.
Not forgetting, of course, that it was the developing constraints and expense of the old trade routes via Venice and Constantinople that motivated the voyages of discovery from western Europe - and the encounters with indigenous peoples - in the first place.
If you want to refer to an idea or argument that originates with The Dawn of Everything, do you say "Davidian"?
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