The Dawn Of Enlightenment [TE]
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes, 24 seconds. Contains 1280 words
Welcome back to Trenchant Edges, the newsletter about the deep history of the dance between fringe ideas and the wider culture.
I’m your reconstructed host Stephen.
I’m here with less back pain and less spine. Well, less of one of the discs thanks to the miracle of modern surgery.
Today’s going to probably be on the shorter side (laughter) because I’m trying to get back on the wheel with this thing. We’re going to be poking through some of the ideas in David Wengrow and David Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything.
When I first read the book one subject really got caught in my head even though I thought the book only really touched it superficially.
The Enlightenment in Europe was direct response to the collected criticisms of European society by various indigenous people.
The book appears to make a good case for this, but I want to dig in a lot more and see how sturdy it really is.
The Dawn of Enlightenment
I want to stress that this isn’t the actual exploration into sources and counterclaims that I plan on doing, we’re just kind of getting up to snuff with what The Davids argue here.
I don’t really know enough about any of this to judge without some more digging so this is kind of an introduction to a new investigation.
Let’s start with a quick round up of what I knew before reading this book. I knew, for example that the Iroquois Confederacy’s Gayanashagowa or Great Law of Peace was a major influence on the US Founding Father’s ideas of what a political constitution could do.
I’ve also been long aware that there’s a full scattering of indigenous ideas, traditions, and practices that have made it into US culture, usually in a degraded form.
Tobacco is obviously scared and we’ve turned it into a poison through hyperconsumption. What better sign you’re doing something wrong is there?
Because of the nature of this conversation, where I stand should be made clear: 1. Land Back Now 2. Honor the treaties (at least) 3. Indigenous women and girls are going missing or murdered at a startling rate and we should stop it. Cops are less than helpful there.
Ok, so let’s get into it.
Their basic thesis is the usual way the story is told is about Colonists changing Indigenous people through conquest, diplomacy, disease, and technology.
The Davids trace a less well known story where the interactions between Indigenous people and European colonizers slowly built up a consistent Indigenous moral critique of European culture and morality. They then trace the way this critique propagated through European society until it was reframed by enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau into the familiar story about human developing civilization out of ignorance.
The Indigenous Critique
What exactly was this critique, though?
Before we get into that, it’s probably important to spend a little time on who was making it. Most of the citations are building up the case that Rousseau was influenced by these criticisms so they focus on France more than other European powers.
As for our Indigenous critics, they mainly came from the following groups:
The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy)
Tawantinsuyu (Inca Empire), sort of
Note: I don’t have any real knowledge of any of these groups. If you spot me fucking up, please let me know.
Basically, we’re talking speakers from two language families: Algonquin and Iroquois Plus the Incas, whom don’t really appear as protagonists in the Davids’ narrative, but are used rhetorically by various European intellectuals.
I find this an immediate yellow flag. We’ll get to why in a moment.
Let’s take a look at some maps for context here.
And for a better view of the Algonquin language group:
So we’re leaving out lots of people the Spanish and French definitely did have contact with. Maybe that means nothing, maybe it’s important. Won’t really know until I can dig more.
I just like having a sense for where things are taking place. Let’s add a when: This all leads up to discussions that prompted the essay contest that Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote Discourse on the Origin of Inequality in 1755 for. This we’re talking about the roughly 250 years between Columbus (Oh, we’ll get to Columbus) and Rousseau.
Much of what we know about the critique comes from a series of books published in Europe from about 1633 on. Dialogues between Europeans and various indigenous people, travelogues, that kind of thing.
The critique itself has 4 parts.
Lack of generosity and mutual aid
Absence of freedom and agency
Religious, financial, and legal systems encouraged bad behavior
Poor conversation practices and weak arguments
In short, Europeans were slavish assholes constantly undermining each other and trying to control each other.
Private property, money, and competition trained Europeans to harm each other which filtered all the way down to manners.
In particular, European workers were made to fear their leaders while many indigenous groups mocked their leaders. Jesuits complained that even their chiefs couldn’t make anyone do anything but with persuasion.
The Dawn of Everything goes into this in considerable detail about all this.
A Consistent Moral and Intellectual Assault on European Society
Over the course of the early 18th century, these criticisms filtered in through first hand accounts, books written by settlers and missionaries, and European intellectual social activities like salons.
As more Europeans were exposed to these new criticisms a funny, if not unexpected, thing happened: They began riffing on the criticisms and turning them to their own ends.
If the Davids are correct: The most popular versions of these ideas were ones acceptable to European society and thus not only dodge the core of the criticism but also build the foundation for what we now call scientific racism.
They claim that the word equality functionally didn’t exist in Europe before the 17th century which makes sense with what I understand about middle age philosophy and theology.
The implications of this are far reaching. For one thing, it means that Leftism as a project has its roots mainly in the recuperated indigenous critique of European culture.
You don’t have to spend much time listening to today’s indigenous people criticize leftists to see truth in the premise. If this is the root of that, that’s exciting because it means it can be addressed.
We’ll see how much as we explore.
Wrapping Up
This took days longer than I expected because it turns out the chapters in Dawn of Everything are WAY longer than I remembered lol. There was a ton to pare down and I’m hoping this will work as an introduction.
I’m getting stronger and more mobile by the day. Today I walked around for a bit with just my cane. I barely noticed I was doing it. Soon I’ll be back in my apartment and things will get back to uh normal.
Normal won’t be a return to intermittent posting (I hope, lol). It turns out when you’re not constantly fighting your body you have more energy!
But yeah, I’ve got a lot of work to organize and go through.
Looking forward to sharing the results with you all.
-Stephen
P.S. I’ll be turning billing off for a couple months. Everyone who’s been supporting me through the last 5 years of pain and being bed ridden deserves some freebies.
Oh, and I’m going to be switching over to another platform relatively soon because Substack feels increasingly hostile and extractive.
What do y’all think?
This was excellent and I'm looking forward to you digging into these ideas. I really like the Davids work in this regard and I'm hoping it holds out. They've normally done great work together.