A critical reading of “The Wisdom of Kandiaronk, The Indigenous Critique, the Myth of Progress and the Birth of the Left” from David Graeber & David Wengrow’s upcoming book The Dawn of Everything.

In this chapter Graeber & Wengrow argue that:

The European Enlightenment was heavily influenced by Native American critiques of European culture.

That European intellectuals reacted against this by developing the theory of “stages of human progress” where we went from from egalitarian hunter-gatherers to pastoralists to farmers to market civilization.

That Jean-Jacques Rousseau synthesized the Native American critique and the stages of progress theory into a seemingly egalitarian critique of European social hierarchies which resigns us to accept hierarchy as the price of civilization. 

That this synthesis was the birth of the “intellectual left”. 

That the concept of human equality has no meaning and should be discarded [these guys *really* needed to listen to this podcast before writing this…]

TRANSCRIPT

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Graeber & Wengrow 2019 – “La Sagesse de Kandiaronk, la critique indigène, la mythe du progrès et la naissance de la gauche“, chapter from The Dawn of Everything (2021), published in French in Journal du MAUSS

Sally Roesch Wagner 2015, How Indigenous Women Inspired The Feminist Movement, Bust Magazine

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