Like the title says, what's on your list, what did you just finish, what did you think of it???
Personally I'm finally almost done with Resisting the Virtual Life, a collection of essays from the mid 90s about the negative outcomes, that were already being realized, and that they foresaw on the horizon, of forcing computers into every aspect of our lives. It's been pretty good so far. A bit of anticommunism in one essay, but many of the others have been spot on, and the authors' perspectives have given me a lot to chew on as someone probably born after most of the essays were written. A good focus on how not inevitable "progress" is, and how political the decisions on how and where to use this technology is, as well as a robust smackdown of the "everyone will be highly educated highly skilled highly paid computer workers in the future" narrative that came along with the rollout of computerization and the internet. I'd really love to talk to someone about this book honestly.
The second to last essay I read was about repetitive stress injuries and other workplace harms arising from increasing computerization, and I was really curious if the authors fears turned out to be overblown or if we are still mostly just ignoring and downplaying those as a serious issue. The last one was a bit unsettling and started giving me Psychopolitics/Mark Fisher vibes with the descriptions of how the enmeshing of computers, education, and psychology would serve to shape our very ways of thinking.
If anyone wants to read it I'll try to scan it, though my copy has writing in the earlier essays from a previous owner.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years
But seriously it's good
yea... I should read it. I recently read some criticism of it (not sure how well founded, but ostensibly from the left) but it sounds like even if it isn't perfect it would be good and highly engaging
Yeah I don't know enough to criticize it, but some stuff does feel a little glossed over.
Graeber's whole thing is a re-interpretation of existing anthropological evidence to fit the anarchist worldview. I think he's more successful than unsuccessful and presents a lot of genuinely intriguing points regardless of your political stance, but there are times where he plays a little fast and loose with the truth - or even just outright lies (there's a point in The Dawn of Everything where he quotes Hernan Cortez talking about an indigenous society in Central America(?), but only the first part of his statement where he's describing part of the society, to make it seem like they're leaderless and fully democratic - Graeber cuts off the quote before he reaches the rest of it where Cortez explicitly states they have leaders and shit).
I essentially subscribe to Matt Christman's point of view on all his books, which is, to paraphrase: "This is great stuff, awesome, you're telling me things that I've never heard before, early humanity is interesting in ways that I hadn't previously considered, I don't regret reading these books at all. You're trying to reconstruct a new paradigm out of the evidence, and you're not lying like the rest of the scholars do by pretending you're doing some "apolitical" interpretation of history, you're explicitly saying that you're trying to be political here, and that's very refreshing. My three problems are: a) why do you not mention key pieces of evidence; b) why are you so allergic to materialism when it could make your work even better; and c) even if I take all this as gospel... so what? Like, what do we do with this information? Spread it around and hope that enough people wake up en masse and realize that they could be doing something other than capitalism?"
It's such a shame that he died before he could finish up his grand project of creating essentially an anarchist Das Kapital, because I would have read the whole thing
That's a very interesting take on graeber, seems right from what I'm gathering. very cool
Other good works include:
Graeber_David_Toward_an_Anthropological_Theory_of_Value.pdf or toward-anthropological-theory-value-false-coin-our-own-dreams-david-graeber
The Dawn of Everything
Together with Debt they are the three most encompassing works in my opinion. Bullshit jobs, Utopia of Rules, Pirates etc. are all good but their points are a bit reduced compared to the three other books in my opinion.
Thanks for Toward, big graeber fan despite being a tankie
Always happy to help. Also a Graeber fan, especially to contrast AnCom opinions Orthodox opinions and Graeber's points of views with each other.
Been meaning to read that one, maybe it'll be next