David Graeber: Anthropologist and Revolutionary
David was the most important anthropologist of his generation and by far its most brilliant and effective public intellectual. He reached wider audiences than anyone of us, possibly even larger than Margaret Mead in anthropology’s heydays. His message was as revolutionary as hers, if not more so. It announced nothing less than an anthropology that would research, critique, and go beyond capitalism. This is my word more than his: David would likely have preferred “bureaucracy and markets”. He always remained a Maussian anarchist and a humanist who did not like the language of Marxism. David was in improbably close sync with the crises of our times and with the millennial counter-mood. His texts expressed the intellectual outbursts of the alter-globalization movement and in particular the worldwide mobilizations of 2010/2011 like no other texts in anthropology do. Both in what they say and in the style and courage that they embody, they will inspire us for years to come. The media will now primarily celebrate and mourn him as an activist and public intellectual. Anthropologists will also mourn him for his activism within anthropology, for example for an open publishing commons. But in the end, I suspect, the intellectual quality of his scholarly work surpasses that of his public commentaries and activist engagements, however close they are entwined. “Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology”, “Value”, and above all “Debt” are deeply original and stellar exercises. The latter book made indisputably clear that anthropologists need theoretically explicit and uncompromisingly formulated visions of longue durée historical process if they want to remain relevant to the most pressing conversations of the times. As no other, David gave us back the courage and self-consciousness for a Leftist critical will and a sweeping but patiently argued vision. His life as an anthropologist tells us that we should face down the risks.
Don Kalb, University of Bergen
Founding Editor of Focaal and Focaalblog
Make it last; for David Graeber
Lenin said that “[t]here are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen”. The passing of David Graeber tells the world that within a lifespan of 59 years, we can contribute to humanity what some might think would require 118 years or more. The intensity of his writing, publishing, speaking, tweeting, and protesting created openings for many, it was empowering in the strict sense of the term. Since the early 2000s, he was never shy to take on what he saw as the very foundations of inequality. Observing him do so, online and offline, seemed as if Atlas played basketball and Sisyphus field hockey.
In this spirit, David Graeber’s anthropology developed into an antidote to several pillars of capitalist ideologies, far beyond liberating us from The False Coin of Our Dreams. Following his early anthropological work on Madagascar, where the discipline’s classics have a much stronger presence than the International Monetary Fund and the foreign powers that have destroyed La Grande Isle as Western Indian Ocean dwellers call the island, David’s projects in the 2000s catapulted mainstream anthropology into the twenty-first century. Unimpressed with postmodern anthropology’s neoliberal canon of grant writing and fiefdom acquisition, he cut the Gordian Knot of navel-gazing, self-reflexive tattle over a heterogeneous or homogeneous end of history. In its place he drove keywords–value, debt, bureaucracy, interregna, and more–into the foundations of 21st century anthropology. David’s embrace of Direct Action as a suitable and potent form of being political was as alive and kicking in his anthropology as in his political work; from a leading role in Occupy Wall Street to throwing his public weight behind the Kurdish revolutionary movements.
On a personal level, Marxists like myself were inclined to agree with the targets of his analysis and to disagree with the substance. Now that we appreciate his life and work, questions over substance fade away and questions about the choice of targets come to the fore. Life is about the alliances we forge–in love and comradeship as much as in robust, respectful exchanges.
For David, let’s look after those alliances and keep anthropology in the 21st century. For everyone, let’s make it last, against our oppressors, and on the wings of desire for a just, communist, and maybe even anarcho-syndicalist future.
Patrick Neveling, Queen Mary University of London
Lead editor of FocaalBlog
Radical encounters
The outpouring of tributes for David Graeber’s live and work from across different social and intellectual worlds is remarkable. Many speak of how he changed how they saw the world. Like me, so many of my friends feel a grief that is otherwise reserved for closer relationships than the one we had with David Graeber. In my case, I had only one face-to-face conversation with Graeber; followed by occasional Twitter interactions, over a span of many years. There will probably be thousands of memories out there similar to the one that follows.
Our one meeting was at a 2011 conference on Debt in Cambridge, when I was a shy MA student. I recount it here because it highlights a generosity that is rare in the circuits of academia, one that reflected Graeber’s rejection of elitist structures, and snobbery. It stood out in stark contrast with my previous encounter. I had been introduced to an established professor who quickly made a polite excuse and headed off to seek out more important academic personae. Dejected, I joined my fellow student friends in the corner, when a smiling David Graeber breezed past the senior scholars, and toward us. I don’t think anyone among us had met him before. Large parts of our conversation were about in/appropriate music for a formal occasion. David had just put Crass at the top of his playlist when someone tapped him on the shoulder and pointed out that the speakers were to leave for dinner. We joked about the ‘posh fish’ he was likely to be presented with at the restaurant, and he walked off into the night, laughing.
David lives on in memories like mine as much as he does in the tributes to his academic and political writings and activism.
Rachel Smith, Cambridge University
Editorial board member of FocaalBlog
David Graeber: Releasing the genius in us
I often thought of David Graeber as a genius. But of the many things that David taught me, it was that there is in fact a genius in each of us.
We can’t see this because we don’t have the collective structures to realise the brilliance within us, because we live in a world that violently excludes the many, that reserves the acquisition of individual heroism for the few, a world today driven by finance capital.
For David, anthropology was important for it was a means to resurrect other possible more beautiful worlds, imagine societies other than our own exclusive one, figure out the larger implications, and then offer those ideas back to the world for an anti-capitalist politics.
These principles guided almost all his intellectual and political contributions – from his critique of ‘bullshit jobs’ to his exposition of the violence of bureaucracy; from his idea of stranger kings to his history of debt.
What David sought, in everything he did – from his writing to his activism and even how he dressed – was to establish an ‘everyday communism.’
In 2013, when we both moved from Goldsmiths to make a home at LSE, I was somewhat annoyed with David for giving up his baggy jeans and cozy red jumper, for he had begun dressing like an aristocrat even acquiring a pocket watch for his waist coat. Until I realized that he was just having fun! He was reclaiming the riches of time, space, creativity, leisure, and all other resources enjoyed by aristocrats; reclaiming them for everyone.
In this world of ever-rising inequality and acute injustice, we need David Graeber’s humour, wisdom and vision more than ever right now. We will miss David dearly but he has gifted us with his words which will continue to inspire us and the generations to come, releasing the potential genius in all of us.
Alpa Shah, London School of Economics
Member of the Focaal Editorial Board
David Graeber. For an anthropology of radical openness
David
was a much-loved colleague and a great source of personal inspiration. His
scholarship on value, debt and labour gave new relevance to the fields of
economic and political anthropology, bringing them in line with a critical
analysis of contemporary capitalism informed by his idiosyncratic and genial
mixture of utopianism, humanism and critical openness. But above
all, it was his monograph on Madagascar, Lost People: magic and the
legacy of slavery in Madagascar which inspired me the most, for the
way it combines fine historical and anthropological analysis with a personal
storytelling informed by an immense sense of empathy
for those ex-slave communities which he felt, shared his same working-class
background – of which he was very proud. In coffee breaks at Goldsmiths we
thought we would write together an article on historical slavery in Brazil and
Madagascar and their contemporary
political relevance. Sadly, this collaboration will never happen, but David’s
trust in life’s possibilities – a title of another enchanting
book of his – will continue to inspire my work.
Mao Mollona, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Member of the Focaal Editorial Board
“The 99%”
Even if David Graeber did not precisely author the slogan “We are the 99%,” he was closely associated with its creation. The 2011 Occupy movement, of which he was both participant and inspiration, helped forward thinking about class on the U.S. left at a time when we were sorely in need of fresh ideas.
Beneath the seemingly simple appearance of a naming an expansive ‘us’ against a narrow ‘them,’ the broad stroke of 99% shouted from the street that capitalism robbed our humanity in multiple ways—through the exploitation of our labor, extraction of surplus through debt, race and gender oppression, and the endless commodification of goods, resources and relationships. Even as an effective mass politics was not the immediate result, the Occupy 99% nonetheless helped a new cohort of young, progressive activists to envision new class maps.
The importance of that legacy should not be ignored. In a country where organized has been on the defensive for decades and the term ‘the working class’ is too often spoken as a stand in for ‘white fractions of the working class,’ the 99% was a meaningful gesture to new lines of identity and solidarity. It was an invitation to crack open connections between oppression, exploitation, dispossession, devaluation, and extraction across populations, space, and time.
The formulation did not issue a successful political call to arms in the moment, but it nevertheless advanced the ball. With purpose and intention, in his scholarship and activism, David Graeber cultivated and tended radical imaginaries. The 99% was a manifestation of that labor. Its afterlife in 21st century anti-capitalist thought and the traces it leaves for future radical aspiration are among his valuable bequests.
Sharryn Kasmir, Hofstra University
Member of the Focaal Editorial Board
The anthropologist as anarchist
One of the most original and brilliant intellectuals of his generation, David Graeber never shied away from controversy. He walked his talk, not only through his incisive, energetic interventions in political discourse, but also with his body. A number of years ago, when I unsuccessfully tried to contact him about a possible visit to Oslo, I was eventually told that he was busy demonstrating with the Occupy movement, but might be back in the office soon.
Of his many books, several of which will be read by generations of critical intellectuals and curious minds to come, I have a particular weakness for one of his minor works, namely Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (2004). In the introduction, Graeber points out that whereas Communism and Marxism have their established pantheon of great thinkers, anarchism does not. Neither Bakunin nor Kropotkin – the classic Russian anarchist thinkers – feature on reading lists or are revered as major social theorists today. Graeber argues that the explanation is simple. Whereas Marxism is heavily theory-driven, anarchism is a practical, flexible, undogmatic moveable feast. He adds that this is why Marxists tend to win theoretical debates, whereas practical applications of Marxism have been a mixed blessing. No wonder that Graeber chose to do his PhD fieldwork among a Malagasy people who had honed the art of resisting hierarchy and external control.
His erudition was no less impressive than his critical acumen, intellectual energy and determination to use the tools of anthropology to make the world a slightly better place. David Graeber’s work will continue to reverberate in and outside of anthropology for many years.
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo
David Graeber: Protest anthropologist
I was shocked and saddened to hear the news of David Graeber’s death. It is almost too much to bear the thought of David’s career as a radical scholar, public intellectual and activist ending so abruptly and so unexpectedly, especially at this time when we are all feeling so vulnerable and when things are so uncertain – and I am not just talking about COVID-19. Among his many intellectual and political contributions, David will be remembered as this era’s most prominent protest anthropologist. It’s a time-honored tradition in anthropology to align oneself with protest movements, revolts, and uprisings. But it’s quite another thing to commit oneself as a full-fledged participant in a political uprising. As is well known, David played a central role in the Occupy movement. He organized and planned actions, collaborated with other activists to devise new forms of political communication, encouraged the movement’s horizontal, leaderless mode of decision making at an early, critical moment in its formation, and became Occupy’s most visible and influential public intellectual. His commitment to Occupy was always as strong as, if not stronger than, his commitment to his professional work as an anthropologist. Few of us can match his record in this regard.
Whether or not one agrees with his views, David’s promotion of an anarchist perspective in both his scholarly and political work was brave and groundbreaking. For decades, anthropologists at the centers of power have bemoaned the insufficiencies of our discipline’s public voice. Many have coined phrases—activist anthropology, public anthropology, engaged anthropology, and militant anthropology, to name a few—to repackage disciplinary knowledge in more media-savvy, morally righteous, publicly consumable, and grassroots-oriented directions. Yet proponents of an “engaged” stance are often reluctant to name explicitly or to flesh out in any detail the political ideologies or philosophies that influence them. Graeber had no such hesitation. His unabashed promotion of an anarchist perspective is more in line, in fact, with the ways that proponents of Marxist, feminist, antiracist, decolonial, and queer anthropology established their political and intellectual bona fides than it is with any “engaged” approach. And, like these more explicitly political approaches, David’s anarchist stance advanced political debates inside and outside of the academy, energized a new generation of politically motivated young scholars, and pushed all of us to elaborate more clearly what we think the relationship between scholarship and politics should be.
In his work and politics, David forsook an alliance with the global elite and committed himself to the radical reimagining of a more equal and democratic world. He brought a seemingly boundless energy to the task of advancing this cause. Let us celebrate David’s work and life even as we mourn his untimely death. And let us commit ourselves to taking inspiration from David’s protest stance. The world needs it now more than ever.
Jeff Maskovsky, City University of New York
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