Spring Elective: The Dawn of Everything: Rethinking Human History

Conventional wisdom suggests that human beings have spent much of their history in a basic “state of nature” as hunter gatherers who were either childlike and innocent, or brutal and violent. This simple status was interrupted only by certain hierarchical systems and cities that formed “civilizations.” It was not until the European Enlightenment, we are told, that humans self€consciously and proactively made political and social decisions about how to understand themselves, organize their societies, and adopt the values of freedom and democracy.

In their recent best-selling book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber and David Wengrow argue that this narrative is almost entirely false. They offer instead a radical reconsideration of the ancient past–and the present–based on fascinating new evidence and scholarship. In doing so, they pose fundamental questions about human beings and the ways we have organized ourselves all over the world: To what extent did Indigenous American political and social structures influence the European Enlightenment? Are large scale societies inherently hierarchical? Are small scale societies more likely to be egalitarian? Did the adaptation of agriculture create systems of domination? Is the way we live now the inevitable result of “human nature” and “progress”–or is it a reflection of choices, accidents, and avarice? Can the past offer viable alternative means of social organization for the future?

This course will engage in a robust and critical reading of The Dawn of Everything, and seek to challenge and expand our understanding of human history, human nature, and contemporary society. In addition to exploring Graeber and Wengrow’s book and critiques of it, we will examine a number of primary sources, as well as the imaginative fiction of Italo Calvino, NK Jemisin, and others. These texts, and this course, might change the way we think about€¦everything.