James Wallace Harris, 3/4/22
I’m reading The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow but I can’t review it as a whole because it features hundreds of interesting ideas and I have no way to assess them all in a small essay. So, I’m going to review some of its ideas in a series of blog posts. Each one will deal with a unique concept that I think is useful.
Overall, the book speculates about societies in prehistory and in three places uses the word “schismogenetic” referring to the term schismogenesis, a word coined by anthropologist Gregory Bateson. This is not a common word, but one that I had to look up, and it’s used in various ways in the social sciences that isn’t exactly how Graeber and Wengrow use it.
Graeber and Wengrow use the concept of schismogenetic to identify a human trait that is very worth recognizing — the urge to belong to a group by defining distinctive wanted traits. This explains children and adolescents who like to conform, to subcultures and hobbyists who love sharing a common interest, to ethnic, cultural, and nationalistic groups who fight cultural appropriation to preserve their unique identity, to political groups who want to maintain unity, and so on.
Schismogenesis can be seen as the cause of xenophobia, but it could also be seen as the inverse of xenophobia. Xenophobia rejects others by traits we don’t like or want, and the schismogenetic urge defines our group identity by specific traits we embrace. This is just me speculating and I’m no expert. I want to embrace this concept because I feel it’s very useful. I see examples of it everywhere. If the term became popular it might help us understand ourselves.
Take conservatives and Republicans. It seems in recent decades they are defining themselves more and more exactly. They have generated a schism by clearly defining who they want to be issue by issue. Take mask-wearing. They’re against it. They see mask wearers as a liberal trait. Ditto for vaccinations. If liberals and Democrats had been against masks and vaccinations, the people on the right would have been for them. If the left is for Critical Race Theory, then the right is against it. If the left believes in climate change, then they don’t. And the details don’t matter to most people.
I use this political example not to be political, but I think it’s obvious that the schismogenetic urge is stronger in conservatives. They really enjoy defining themselves and being part of their group, and it seems they fear being seen as not conforming. For example, being called a RINO is a terrible insult. And this has worked out well for conservatives because they are better at organizing and defining themselves than the liberals.
But I believe we all have schismogenetic urges. I saw this photo on Facebook and it reminded me of how back in the 1960s we all wanted to be individual free spirits, but in reality, the hippie counter-culture was very conforming.
Graeber and Wengrow used the concept of schismogenetic to explain why the hundreds of Native American tribes created very distinctive and diverse societies. I think everyone uses the trait to join the groups and subcultures they want to embrace as their identity. I believe this is why the concept of cultural appropriation has developed in recent years — subcultures want to protect their identity, their brand. And that’s cool. I’m not necessarily saying this is a bad trait, but it can lead to schisms divided by hate.
Some of the reviews that are deeply critical of The Dawn of Everything attack it because they consider Graeber and Wengrow of being historical revisionists. And I see this as a schismogenetic trait too. There are those who define themselves by the histories they embrace and they really don’t like the idea that what they’ve learned and accepted is being revised. It challenges their identity.
Science and history are constantly revising their disciplines with new data. The social sciences aren’t as exact as classical physics, so they go through more upheavals. Those upheavals cause new schisms and threaten old ones. Trying to fully grok The Dawn of Everything is difficult. Graeber and Wengrow keep bringing in politics by using studies of prehistory societies. I think this clouds what they are trying to do. At one point they say, “Since this book is mainly about freedom…” but is that true? I thought it was about prehistory. That makes me wonder if the goal of this book is to be schismogenetic.
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 
Can I share this with others, Jim? I haven’t read this book, but I’m a member of a social group (a group of friends, not a formal group) and we were discussing this book recently.
Sure. Blogs are always for sharing. What did your group think? So far, I’m encountering a lot of polarized reactions.
Many thanks, Jim. I think the person who initially mentioned this book liked it, but not everyone else has read it. We’re not formally reading the book as a group–we just discuss whatever someone happens to be reading or watching.
The book is explicitely politcal, and uses history to make its point. Looking forward to your other posts on it…
I’m actually reading it for the anthropology and speculation about prehistory. I wish it wasn’t so political.
Yes I can unwerstand that. On the other hand, there is so much to improve politically in our current world, and so much suffering because of big inequalities, it’s good some authors remind us things needn’t be as they are.
I’ve all for reducing inequality, and I’m not against what the authors are doing politically, it’s just many reviewers have rejected the book out of hand for some specific political issues ignoring all the hundreds of other interesting ideas. There’s a lot to this book, much more than just the hot button issues.
Yes, very true.
Yes it is political. It means it’s not after truth but ideology.
“The Dawn of Everything” is biased disingenuous account of human history (www.persuasion.community/p/a-flawed-history-of-humanity ) that spreads fake hope (the authors of “The Dawn” claim human history has not “progressed” in stages, or linearly, and must not end in inequality and hierarchy as with our current system… so there’s hope for us now that it could get different/better again). As a result of this fake hope porn it has been widely praised. It conveniently serves the profoundly sick industrialized world of fakes and criminals. The book’s dishonest fake grandiose title shows already that this work is a FOR-PROFIT, instead a FOR-TRUTH, endeavor geared at the (ignorant gullible) masses.
Fact is human history has “progressed” by and large in linear stages, especially since the dawn of agriculture (www.focaalblog.com/2021/12/22/chris-knight-wrong-about-almost-everything ). This “progress” has been fundamentally destructive and is driven and dominated by “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room” (www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html ) which the fake hope-giving authors of “The Dawn” entirely ignore naturally (no one can write a legitimate human history without understanding the nature of humans). And these two married pink elephants are the reason why we’ve been “stuck” in a destructive hierarchy and unequal class system (the “stuck” question is the major question in “The Dawn” its authors never answer, predictably), and will be far into the foreseeable future.
A good example that one of the authors, Graeber, has no real idea what world we’ve been living in and about the nature of humans is his last brief article on Covid where his ignorance shines bright already at the title of his article, “After the Pandemic, We Can’t Go Back to Sleep.” Apparently he doesn’t know that most people WANT to be asleep, and that they’ve been wanting that for thousands of years (and that’s not the only ignorant notion in the title). Yet he (and his partner) is the sort of person who thinks he can teach you something authentically truthful about human history and whom you should be trusting along those terms. Ridiculous!
“The Dawn” is just another fantasy, or ideology, cloaked in a hue of cherry-picked “science,” served lucratively to the gullible ignorant underclasses who crave myths and fairy tales.
You left this same message on my other blog.
Yes, The Dawn of Everything is political in places, but I’m not concerned with that. It brings up hundreds of concepts to think about, and it’s going to take me a long time to process them. You seem to want to dismiss the book because of its political analogies, but what about the countless nonpolitical concepts it covers? I’m interested in prehistory, and this book does cover a lot of ancient societies. And it sums up a lot of current and historical anthropology, which I’m enjoying. I can easily ignore Graeber’s radical politics.
I finished the book a few days ago and imo it’s a brilliant mess. The information and ideas are marvelous but the organization needs work. The point though, imo, is that Rousseau and historians since then might be wrong in many of their ideas. We know a lot more now than we did in the 1960s and it doesn’t all fit neatly into the old outlines – especially when there is no written record of the times.
A brilliant mess might be a fair assessment. Too much is made of the Rousseau/Hobbes chapter when they leave that behind rather quickly and cover a lot of other territories. I do think it’s interesting to compare Graeber and Wengrow’s take on Rousseau/Hobbes and Bregman’s take in Humankind.
Fascinating. Let me think about this. I don’t need to choose sides,do I
No, of course not.