David Graeber: Anarchist and More
By Rebecca White
From Souldish
David Graeber, intrepid anthropologist and anarchist, talks about the magical battles and spiritual jujitsu of Madagascar, the trials of being a political dissident, and the emerging "Anarchist Century."
It's not often that we get to sneak a peak into the minds that will no doubt be remembered. David Graeber is one such mind. But more than a mind, he is a man whose work has been met with varying opinion in the past few years due to the threatening nature of his anarchist beliefs.
When I met him, I was faced with a slew of discussion topics to choose from. In the scholarly world he's known for his research on Madagascar. In the world of gossip, he's known for being the anthropology professor at Yale who was fired without due cause.
Either way you look at it, David is an anthropological scholar, an anarachist, and an all around witty guy with a wry sense of humor one wouldn't expect from someone so feared by the "ruling class".
Are you an anthropologist that’s an anarchist or an anarchist that happens to be an anthropologist?
I guess it depends on what kind of day it is. In a way, both. I guess I considered myself an anarchist for most of my life, but then I’ve been interested in anthropology for most of my life, too. I imagine they came from the same impulse which was this sort of belief that there’s got to be something better than this. An interest in human possibilities.
Much of your anthropological work was done in Madagascar. Why did you choose Madagascar for your doctoral thesis?
That’s an interesting question. I wasn’t originally thinking of studying Madagascar when I went to graduate school. I was sort of vaguely thinking somewhere in Indonesia. There seemed to be various practical reasons that that wasn’t such a good idea. Polynesia was also an option but I decided not to go there because I didn’t want to eat yams everyday. I don’t really like yams.
Then my advisor mentioned I should take a look at Madagascar, so I started reading about it. I started reading folk tales, actually. I wanted to get an idea of what people were like there. What I found was they’re incredibly subversive. There’s all these stories about people playing tricks on God. It just seemed like these were people whose attitude I would appreciate.
