David Graeber’s “Pirate Enlightenment”

The true, swashbuckling lives of matriarchs, anarchists, and pirates at the crossroads of the world.

The untimely death of activist/anthropologist/author David Graeber in 2020 tore a hole in the future, depriving us of not just Graeber’s presence, but of the books he had left to write — incisive, brilliant, hilarious followups to the likes of Debt and Bullshit Jobs:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/07/facebook-v-humanity/#spectre

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/24/zana-malata/#libertalia

And what books Graeber had left in him! Just weeks prior to his death, Graber finished Dawn Of Everything, his ten-year collaboration with David Wengrow. It’s a nose-to-tail reconsideration of everything we know about the civilizations of prehistory, and what they tell us about the essential nature of humanity:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/08/three-freedoms/#anti-fatalism

Today, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux publishes Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, billed as Graeber’s “final posthumous work” (more on this…