Creatividad social, imaginación y placer político: reflexiones sobre la antropología de David Graeber

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to reflect on the anthropology of the late David Graeber. Starting from putting into question the separation between his academic works —of great anthropological and ethnographic scholarship—and his political works —made in an incisive language but accessible to all audiences—, I select three topics or sources of the Graeberian reflection that demonstrate how futile such division is. In what follows, I examine successively the problems of social creativity, imagination, and political pleasure. Graeber devoted a good part of his personal, professional, and political energies to produce innovative answers to those three themes. In addition to inserting these conceptual discussions in a critical and systematic analytical reading of his work, I identify certain limited or specific conceptual discussions that stem from them but also account for their interrelationships. In the conclusions I propose that Graeber built his own transcendence against the subtle and discrete hierarchies of academia and the politics of knowledge, wounding their sectarian dogmatisms in an original, irreverent, and playful way. 

Keywords:

David Graeber

crítica social

creatividad social

imaginación

placer político

David Graeber

social criticism

social creativity

imagination

political pleasure

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