Re: No TP: Commentary on “The Dawn of Everything”
Joseph Tracy
brook7 at sover.net
Tue Dec 7 18:49:09 UTC 2021
Just finished the book and am re-listening to the early part in question. Not really troubled by Bell's critique for several reasons.
First is the new testament quote or the idea that Judaism was egalitarian. That this is what he came up with to exemplify an important western ideal of egalitarianism is tellingly weak.The OT is the story of a ‘chosen people’ who make war on the inhabitants of what is now called Israel based on the visionary promise of Yawheh to Abraham. They were supposedly slaves in Egypt and when they, according to the story, kill off most of Cannanites these conquered people are made slaves as is fitting for pagans. The NT verse from Paul is pretty qualified if you read more of Paul where he exhorts slaves to obey their masters and everyone to yield obedience to any earthly ruler since all rulers are appointed by God. He also disallows woment to teach men. The hierarchical structures of the religion that emerged historically and its connections to empires and nations was well embedded by the time of Rousseau.
Also the authors moved away from a book about the origins of inequality because how do we understand the meaning of equality: social sharing of food and resources, identical personalities and habits, equal rights for all or for some? They move to other more measurable qualities to make socetal distinctions.
As to Rousseau’s private life the only thing the authors actually imply is that Rousseau had servants. I don’t know or care what his exact court ambitions were, but doubt the athors just made shit up about Rousseau.
The argument over how Lahontan got his version of Kandiaronk is left open by Wegner and Graeber. They take a position but also tell us that the position taken by Bell is the more common academic position.
The main points made by Kandiaronk can be found in other Native American intellectuals. And I had encountered all Kandiaronk’s arguments before hearing about Kandiaronk in this volume.
The main value and use of the material drawn from historic and ethnographic information on the tribal peoples of the Americas and elsewhere is to show that their variety of social arrangements was not merely an accident of culture but a product of thoughtful exchange within these communities, and that they often had lively traditions of debate about decisions and self governance. There are many supporting materials for this. The authors show the range of societies from hierarchical empires to large non-hierarchical cities and that they do not happen in a linear progression.
ANYWAY. The core ideas of the book do not rest or depend on Bell's academic question. The core has to do with the diversity of prehistoric social arrangements which are indicated by archeological digs over the last 50 years. These archeological findings combined with the diversity among historic precolonial cultures bring into question the idea of a linear progression of human development and that has powerful implications for a worldview which rests heavily on the idea that current global social arrangements are the inevitable apex of a natural progression. It is heavily footnoted, so readers can look at source materials.
On Dec 7, 2021, at 10:34 AM, David Elliott via Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
>
> There was a mention on the list of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.
> I haven’t yet read it. This critique focuses on the authors’ approach to the French Enlightenment.
> https://www.persuasion.community/p/a-flawed-history-of-humanity?fbclid=IwAR3HN_zhNXGnxbGd4HCG8do3ML28QveplW60lANW6OFdR3jeY1wcEBljdfs
>
> --
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