Anarchy—In a Manner of Speaking by David Graeber et al. (review)

David Graeber always made a point of never discussing concepts without questioning the barriers between "Western modernity" and "everything else." In Anarchy—In a Manner of Speaking, he does it again—only with company.

The title is a pun with the book's format, a discussion among Graeber, French–Tunisian philosopher Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, French writer–actress Assia Turquier-Zauberman, and Soviet artist Nika Dubrovski, also Graeber's wife. The book was published simultaneously in English, French, and German in October 2020, a month after Graeber's unexpected and heartbreaking death.

The book feels like an uninterrupted, unsystematic conversation—despite its subdivision in 29 chapters, and Graeber's clear role as interviewee. Some of it is not unheard of, like the three-element analysis of the modern state¹ or the discussion on rules of engagement,² although it is interesting to see how these ideas are developed within a dialogue. The book is not going to be revolutionary for anyone familiar with Graeber's work.

Actual new content includes the idea of ugly mirrors (processes in which people convince themselves they should be afraid of their own agency), the relationship between domination and care, and speculations on Western theories of desire. Most of the new ideas rely on an analytical framework on freedom, the foundations of which can already be found in earlier texts.³ Freedom is conceived as play, the exercise of which turns into games—that is, rules. Games are attempts at creating little utopias, because everyone is equal, knows the rules, and can win. They are Utopian also because play can be daunting (rules make life more predictable, more manageable). The utopia of modern nation-statehood is that we will all be free when rules encompass all the domains of human action; it is the victory of the game (no matter how damaging to some) over the possibility that its rules will be modified from outside their own logic. Freedom would be in the tension between the play principle and the rules that it generates. However, new rules are always the inevitable horizon. There is never a (utopian) endpoint. From this point, however, we see new developments: Graeber describes specific rights that would make this ideal of freedom realizable (freedom to leave, freedom to ignore orders, and freedom to reformulate the rules of the game). Also particularly noteworthy is Graeber's narration of how the critique of inequality came to be prioritized over that of "unfreedom": It has to do with how Rousseau twisted Native American criticism of Europe.

Alongside the inspiring moments, a few arguments raise eyebrows. Some relations of domination described as perversions of caring relations seem to depend on preexisting structures of domination. Others are even said to be perversions of hospitality—although one could doubt whether hospitality and care are the same thing. By describing care as that which improves somebody else's freedom, are we not defining away the dark side of care?

Regarding the other voices, Turquier-Zauberman often connects different moments of the debate, challenging Graeber to do it too—unsurprisingly, she did wonderfully editing the volume. Dubrovski unfortunately does not intervene as often, since she does it very well. On the other hand, Kacem is at times hard to grasp; the others often circle around what he says or interpret him generously, with the occasional protest.

However, the book does begin and end with a discussion on how dialogue is fundamental to constitute who we are. In that context, Kacem's contrarian idiosyncrasies do not look as out of place. At any rate, the humbleness typical of such conversations is reflected in the hesitant nature of the arguments; things rarely "are," they "seem to be," it is "almost as if they are." To be fair to this book, however, this is not uncommon in Graeber's texts.

In summary, this is not a theoretical treatise; it does...