Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia

Resumen del libro

'A characteristically radical re-reading of history that places the social and political experiments of pirates at the heart of the European Enlightenment. A brilliant companion volume to the best-selling Dawn of Everything' Amitav GhoshThe Enlightenment did not begin in Europe. Its true origins lie thousands of miles away on the island of Madagascar, in the late seventeenth century, when it was home to several thousand pirates.

This was the Golden Age of Piracy, a period of violent buccaneering and rollicking legends - but it was also, argues anthropologist David Graeber, a brief window of radical democracy, as the pirate settlers attempted to apply the egalitarian principles of their ships to a new society on land. For Graeber, Madagascar's lost pirate utopia represents some of the first stirrings of Enlightenment political thought. In this jewel of a book, he offers a way to 'decolonize the Enlightenment', demonstrating how this mixed community experimented with an alternative vision of human freedom, far from that being formulated in the salons and coffee houses of Europe.

Biografía del autor

David Graeber, antropox{0026} x00301;logo y escritor empenx{0026} x00303;ado en recordarnos lo obvio: que buena parte de lo que llamamos civilizaciox{0026} x00301;n es una chapuza organizada en torno a la deuda, la burocracia y trabajos absurdos que nadie necesita y consumen nuestras vidas. Fue expulsado de Yale por pensar demasiado libremente (o quizax{0026} x00301; por su activismo impenitente) y acogido en la London School of Economics, desde donde no parox{0026} x00301; de lanzar preguntas demoledoras hasta su prematura muerte. Su obra es una combinaciox{0026} x00301;n de rigor cientix{0026} x00301;fico, audacia interpretativa y descaro. No solo estudiox{0026} x00301; el origen y la evoluciox{0026} x00301;n de las estructuras de poder, tambiex{0026} x00301;n nos ensenx{0026} x00303;o a mirarlas con actitud burlona y desafiante.