ENGL 3860: Dawn of Everything Reading Guide Zine

What I appreciate about the book
is the way it builds its argument
not by moving in a straight line
from beginning to end but rather
accumulates different case
studies from around the world
and across time. The book thus
a v o i d s r e p e a t i n g t h e v e r y
approach to history that it is critical
of: that humanity has developed in
lock step from a definite point in
the past to a single point in the
future. If, as the authors argue,
h u m a n i t y i s a n o n g o i n g
experiment in being together,
then the form of the book must
echo this experimentation.
We can understand anthropology and
archeology as a history of rhetoric in
their stared interest in how people have
arranged themselves and related to one
another. In short, how we make publics.
Dr. Nathaniel A. Rivers
nathaniel.rivers@slu.edu
slupublicrhetoric.tumblr.com
“[I]s not the capacity to experiment
with different forms of social
organization itself a quintessential
part of what makes us human? That
is, beings with the capacity for selfcreation,
even freedom? The ultimate
question of human history, as we’ll
see, is not our equal access to
material resources (land, calories,
means of production), much though
these things are obviously important,
but our equal capacity to contribute
to decisions about how to live
together. Of course, to exercise that
capacity implies that there should be
something meaningful to decide in
the first place.”
—Graeber and Wengrow
Critiques
”It then makes sense that Graeber
and Wengrow place significantly
more emphasis on the mental
rather than material dimensions
of imagination and choice,
revealing that they are devoted
heirs and stewards of a longstanding
European intellectual
tradition who are not proposing
anything so radical or rebellious
after all.”
—Carolyn Nakamura, “Untenable
History” in Offshoot
Why
the Dawn of
everything
in
public
writing
Fall 2023 l ENGL 3860
Some possible questions
• Why is it that people, especially
s i n c e t h e E n l i g h t e n m e n t ,
have struggled to imagine the
p o s s i b i l i t y o f r e i n v e n t i n g
themselves? What is it about
modernity in particular that has
made people feel simultaneously
imaginatively empowered and
constrained?*
• If all science relies on simplifications,
how can one do history in a way that
expands rather than reduces our
sense of possibilities? What is lost or
potentially gained by relying on
intellectual simplifications?*
Critiques
“The question of the origins of
inequality in human evolution and
history matters a great deal for
how we try to change the world.
But Graeber and Wengrow want
change without attending to
equality and class, and they are
hostile to environmental and
ecological explanations. These
f l a w s h a v e c o n s e r v a t i v e
implications.”
—Nancy Lindisfarne and
Jonathan Neale, “All Things
Being Equal” in Climate &
Capitalism
For generations, our remote ancestors have been
cast as primitive and childlike―either free and equal
innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we
are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those
original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our
baser instincts.
Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology
and anthropology, the authors show how history
becomes a far more interesting place once we learn
to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive
what’s really there.
The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms
our understanding of the human past and offers a
path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new
ways of organizing society. This is a monumental
book of formidable intellectual range, animated by
curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of
direct action.
Some possible questions
• To what extent are humans, even
those who haven’t read Hobbes or
R o u s s e a u , v i c t i m s o f t h e i r
intellectual tyranny?*
• What is or isn’t the role of
environment and ecology in the
book’s arguments?
• How does technology feature into
Graeber and Wengrow’s tracing of
the various ways in which humans
have experimented with living
together?
* Questions from David Graeber