Pirate Enlightenment

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 - 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. In this jewel of a book, Graeber 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. Its actors were Malagasy women, philosopher kings and escaped slaves, exploring ideas that were ultimately to be put into practice by Western revolutionary regimes a century later.

Pirate Enlightenment playfully dismantles the central myths of the Enlightenment. In their place comes a story about the magic, sea battles, purloined princesses, manhunts, make-believe kingdoms, fraudulent ambassadors, spies, jewel thieves, poisoners and devil worship that lie at the origins of modern freedom.

Biografía del autor

David Graeber (1961-2020) fue doctor en Antropología y profesor del Goldsmiths College de Londres. Con un largo historial de activismo y compromiso político, colaboró en medios como The Nation, The Guardian o Harper's Magazine, entre otros. En 2006 la London School of Economics le reconoció como un destacado antropólogo que transformó radicalmente el estudio de la cultura. Fue un pensador icónico y un renombrado activista, y sus primeros esfuerzos en el Parque Zuccotti hicieron de Occupy Wall Street el movimiento que definió toda una era. Es autor de En deuda, de Trabajos de mierda y de La utopía de las normas. Además, es coautor, con David Wengrow, del superventas El amanecer de todo: Una nueva historia de la humanidad. Todo ellos publicados en Ariel.