Our Lives Pivot on Origin Stories: On Deep Histories of Landwork
Pratchett’s A’tuin. The Turtle on whose back stands four elephants atop which sits Discworld.
I used to wonder why superhero franchises spend so much time on origin stories. The focus on an individual’s trauma at the expense of attending to the social context. The time spent on flashbacks. Entire movies given over to the dawn of a hero. A key reason, I think, is that these origin stories create a pivot used to justify the forthcoming actions of these superheroes. They justify their awesome power and the gargantuan decisions they take for the ‘greater good’. So to in real life, origin stories are there for when we wonder why.
Why do so many people not have enough food to eat? Why can’t we afford a simple house? Why is your sex life unsatisfying? Why do I have a chronic health condition? Why don’t you have children? Do you wonder why you even exist? I believe origin stories are there to help when our imagination wonders. They justify what we see, taste, smell, feel, and what we hear. How we think, speak, listen, and act. Origin stories define what is scientifically, morally, mortally, and existentially crucial. They legitimize our status quo.
They are the premise. The bickering of politics, the calculations of economics, your personal development, our societal transformation, my job, your kids, your life, the lives of others, the cows you eat. The way these everyday phenomena have emerged in the world balances on the pin head of an origin story. Why are you fighting? The origin story tells you it’s because life is a competitive struggle. Why are you caring? The origin story tells you because humanity is noble at its core. Why do you own this land? The origin story tells you why. Why do you not own any land? The origin story tells you why.
The origin story. That’s what I am fascinated with. Because when my thoughts wander and wonder and imagine, it’s the origin story that provides a sense of direction in the landscape of life. They define whether I end up looking endlessly for the promised land, stuck in a rut or dancing atop a mountain to the sounds of James Brown. These origin stories are the pivot that leverage the entire galacta-tonne of how we collectively understand what it means to be human. I invite you to join me in reading a set of books that rewrite the origin story of human civilizations with a particular attention to the stories of hunter-gatherers and agriculture.
I invite you to a reading circle from June-November 2021 exploring a handful of accessible texts that reposition world history with regards to landwork and agrarian histories. We will end with the highly anticipated publication of ‘The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity’ by David Graeber (RIP) and David Wengrow. A book that does not just demolish the billionaire legitimizing ramblings of the ‘grand narrative’ authors of today (Pinker, Harari, Diamond et al.), but aims to ‘offer a path toward imagining new forms of freedom and new ways of organizing society’. Building up to this, we will start with James C Scott’s re-exploration of the relationship between early State Societies and agriculture in Against the Grain hopefully finishing it in time to meet on the 12th July 19:30 – 21:30 UTC as a reading circle. We will then encounter Roots of Civilization, a postcolonial history of the Levant written from a prison cell by Abdullah Öcalan, a key text of the ongoing Rojavan Revolution rooted in Ecology and Feminism (23rd August 19:30 – 21:30 UTC).
A small change in gear then brings Bruce Pascoe’s fusion of aboriginal storytelling with archaeological data, in Dark Emu, casting a new light on a civilization once classified as subhuman by a colonial empire, in particular their mystification of them as simple hunter-gatherers (6th September 19:30 – 21:30 UTC). Penultimately, I am bringing it home to Cyprus with a kickass paper by Sarah Harris on how colonial civilization used the Ruined Landscape Narrative to justify landgrabbing around the world, consequently ruining landscapes, but also mystifying other kinds of ecological practice (18th October 19:30 – 21:30 UTC). Our final meeting being on 15th November 19:30 – 21:30 UTC to discuss The Dawn of Everything.
If you would like to participate in one or all of the sessions, please contact me so I can send you the relevant meeting links and supporting materials. Reviews of each book, based on the reading circle discussions, will be also published on this site of beautiful resistance. In libris libertas!
AVI (DR KBH)
I am trained in Social Anthropology and Social Science Research Methods. I work with practitioners and academics from multiple fields. If you want to step into the messy spaghetti of reality and enjoy the feast, I invite you to dine with me.
I focus on how human-environmental and human-human relations shape each other over time. I have conducted interdisciplinary research on fisheries, historical ecology, hunting, water sector, commons, evolutionary theory, institutional development and environmental management.