"Graeber and Wengrow’s strategy is to fire enough arrows at the Standard Narrative and its Enlightenment origins to open doors for certain freedoms, although they do not offer any one narrative with enough scope and escape velocity to suggest how humanity should use its freedoms."

#DanielZola

https://overland.org.au/2021/12/playing-with-history-a-review-of-the-dawn-of-everything/

This is exactly the point. It's not for any writer to tell anyone how to use their freedom. To do so is to betray the project of defending it.

"Where Walter Benjamin claims that, since history is written by the victors, every document of civilisation is a document of barbarism, Graeber and Wengrow seek to re-write certain foundational documents. However, while Benjamin writes against the grain in the name of the oppressed, the proletariat, Graeber and Wengrow appear to do so in the name of ‘freedom’."

#DanielZola

https://overland.org.au/2021/12/playing-with-history-a-review-of-the-dawn-of-everything/

#history #anthropology #WalterBenjamin #DavidGraeber #DavidWengrow #freedom #civilisation