David Graeber and David Wengrow – ‘The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity’. This new book from Graeber and Wengrow seeks to challenge assumptions about human social evolution and narratives of a linear development from primitive brutes to civilised people. Instead, the authors draw attention to the diversity of earlier human societies, arguing that humans had lived in large, complex, and decentralized societies for thousands of years. In doing so, Graeber and Wengrow fundamentally transform both our understanding of the past, and our vision for new ways of organising society in the future.

Schedule

  • Thursday 23rd December - Foreword, Chapters 1 & 2
  • Sunday 2nd January - Chapters 3 & 4
  • Sunday 9th January - Chapters 5 & 6
  • Sunday 16th January - Chapters 7 & 8
  • Sunday 23rd January - Chapters 9 & 10
  • Sunday 30th January - Chapter 11 & Conclusion

Outline

  • Chapter 1: Farewell to Humanity’s Childhood

    • SOME BRIEF EXAMPLES OF WHY RECEIVED UNDERSTANDINGS OF THE BROAD SWEEP OF HUMAN HISTORY ARE MOSTLY WRONG (OR, THE ETERNAL RETURN OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU)
    • ON THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
    • HOW THE CONVENTIONAL NARRATIVE OF HUMAN HISTORY IS NOT ONLY WRONG, BUT QUITE NEEDLESSLY DULL
    • ON WHAT'S TO FOLLOW

  • Chapter 2: Wicked Liberty

    • IN WHICH WE SHOW HOW CRITIQUES OF EUROCENTRISM CAN BACKFIRE, AND END UP TURNING ABORIGINAL THINKERS INTO ‘SOCK-PUPPETS’
    • IN WHICH WE CONSIDER WHAT THE INHABITANTS OF NEW FRANCE MADE OF THEIR EUROPEAN INVADERS, ESPECIALLY IN MATTERS OF GENEROSITY, SOCIABILITY, MATERIAL WEALTH, CRIME, PUNISHMENT AND LIBERTY
    • IN WHICH WE SHOW HOW EUROPEANS LEARNED FROM (NATIVE) AMERICANS ABOUT THE CONNECTION BETWEEN REASONED DEBATE, PERSONAL FREEDOMS AND THE REFUSAL OF ARBITRARY POWER
    • IN WHICH WE INTRODUCE THE WENDAT PHILOSOPHER-STATESMAN KANDIARONK, AND EXPLAIN HOW HIS VIEWS ON HUMAN NATURE AND SOCIETY TOOK ON NEW LIFE IN THE SALONS OF ENLIGHTENMENT EUROPE (INCLUDING AN ASIDE ON THE CONCEPT OF ‘SCHISMOGENESIS’)
    • IN WHICH WE EXPLAIN THE DEMIURGIC POWERS OF A. R. J. TURGOT, AND HOW HE TURNED THE INDIGENOUS CRITIQUE OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION ON ITS HEAD, LAYING THE BASIS FOR MOST MODERN VIEWS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION (OR: HOW AN ARGUMENT ABOUT ‘FREEDOM’ BECAME ONE ABOUT ‘EQUALITY’)
    • HOW JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, HAVING WON ONE PRESTIGIOUS ESSAY COMPETITION, THEN LOST ANOTHER (COMING IN OVER THE PERMITTED WORD LENGTH), BUT FINALLY WENT ON TO CONQUER THE WHOLE OF HUMAN HISTORY
    • IN WHICH WE CONSIDER RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE INDIGENOUS CRITIQUE, THE MYTH OF PROGRESS AND THE BIRTH OF THE LEFT
    • BEYOND THE ‘MYTH OF THE STUPID SAVAGE’ (WHY ALL THESE THINGS MATTER SO MUCH FOR OUR PROJECT IN THIS BOOK)

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  • CptKrkIsClmbngThMntn [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    And this is one of the things that has to be stressed about Marx’s work. He analyses things, yes, commodities and money and materials, but also crucially relations. I’ve used the word a lot but open it up for a second. Relations are between human beings, not things. Marx himself says that capital obscures the “material relations between people as social relations between things.” Take property – it seems at first glance to be a legal relationship between a person and a thing that they own, but it’s really a legal relationship between a person and everyone else: none of you are allowed to touch my shit. These relations are what are most important.

    As my king of France example indicated, relations are mediated by people and their ideas. That is why I am writing this essay and why I am going to finish it with encouraging you all to get out there and join an org or do some direct action. The point is that we can change all kinds of material realities if we change the hearts, the ideas, and the passions in the right places – hence the traditional focus on organizing workers. Yes, you can call this a smear of idealism if you want, but I think it’s necessary.

    I’m reminded of a quote: every day we wake up and go to work to build capitalism. Why not build something else? The importance of this entire discussion is to find that proper fuzzy fusion between a mechanical world around us and the fact that each of us actually has some amount of sway over our corners of the social fabric. The reason we don’t walk out is that the problem is a massive prisoner’s dilemma, and that conditions of that dilemma can change with class consciousness, building trust, and even building a kind of “faith” in each other.

    I do personally think there are elements of our future that our predetermined. From Giovanni Arrighi I’m mostly convinced we’re still going through a period of greater and greater turmoil, which rips into our social fabric and traditions and even the existing structures of capital and gives us opportunities to start growing something else instead. I also know that if we don’t have a model of the world that grants us the ability to take any part in its trajectory, we will confine ourselves to our asses, and then our path will be as close to guaranteed as its ever been.

    • dat_math [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Thank you for writing all of this. I'll have to reread it when I'm less burdened at work, but so far I think it's a really interesting piece on the interface where mechanical material processes meet human agency/choice/will/whatever you want to call it.