Welcome to our January newsletter
First of all, some housekeeping: enough is enough, we are bringing our Twitter/X activities to Bluesky. Follow us here! Our handle is: @davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
David Graeber Institute
David Graeber’s Birthday talks
Event date: February 12th / 2025
In London, James Schneider and Sophie Scott-Brown will be speaking at the Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Rd, N1 9DY at 6pm GMT. We’ll talk about the release of the anniversary edition of Fragments of Anarchist Anthropology, with a foreword by Sophie Scott-Brown and participation of James Schneider.
Bring cakes, candles and champagne and make it a celebration of David Graeber’s life!
Democracy In Ancient Greece – Mirko Canevaro
Event date: March 20th / 2025
We received many questions after the first meeting, hosted by Mirko Canevaro and Greg Yudin (you can watch it here), so we decided to follow up with discussion on David Graeber’s piece – There Never Was A West, with a focus on the myths around Democracy in Ancient Greece. Professor Mirko Canevaro and Mark Fuller will join us again for the conversation.
What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun?
Event date: April 3 / 2025
We will hold a Zoom meeting to discuss David Graeber’s piece – What’s The Point If We Can’t have fun.” Steven Shaviro who is Emeritus Professor of English at Wayne State University in Detroit will join us to speak.
If you didn’t manage to join our previous sessions, the recordings are available on our YouTube channel and on the individual event pages:
There Never Was a West / Cory Doctorow (October 3 / 2024)
In this session of “The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World…” reading group, we discussed with Cory Doctorow the essay by David Graeber “There Never Was a West”. You can catch up on this talk here, and also go back to some clips from Cory’s talk in Busan earlier last year.
There Never Was a West / Marcus Rediker (November 7 / 2024)
The second discussion of David Graeber’s essay “There Never Was a West”, led and moderated by Marcus Rediker, in the frame of “The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World…” reading group. Link to the recording.
There Never Was a West / Greg Yudin and Mirko Canevaro (December 5 / 2024)
The third discussion of Graeber’s essay “There Never Was a West”: A conversation between Greg Yudin and Mirko Canevaro, in the frame of “The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World…”. You can watch it here.
Against Economics / Michael Hudson (January 9 / 2025)
For the forth of our monthly discussions, Michael Hudson delivered a remarkable speech on David Graeber’s essay Against Economics. Don’t miss the chance to watch it!
Visual Assemblies
On February 4th Nika Dubrovssky will facilitate a Visual Assembly at MayDay Space in Bushwick, NYC. This Assembly will be a continuation of the gathering held at the Interference Archive in November 2024. This time, we will not start from scratch but build upon the work already created—filled with the thoughts and drawings contributed by participants during the last assembly.
Cities Made Differently: Visual Assembly in Amsterdam
Event date: February 20th / 2025
Join our Visual Assembly in the Netherlands, hosted by the Central Library of Amsterdam.
Artist and writer Nika Dubrovsky invites children aged 9 to 12 to join a Visual Assembly to collectively imagine, draw the map, and describe the rules of life in a City of the Future.
Visit their page to register! And share their announcement in Dutch with anyone interested!Dutch-speaking people who are interested in joining as translators or volunteers can get in touch with the Anthropology for Kids team via info@a4kids.org.
Museum of Care
Carnival: Reading Groups and Talks
On January 30th, we continued our reading group on Mikhail Bakhtin and its relationship to the legacy of David Graeber and contemporary political reality.
After a pause this past December, we are back to discuss Rabelais and His World. You can read the text we will be discussing here.
The group will be led by Isabel Jacobs. Please join us!
Open-Source Library
For a long time, the Open-Source Library Room in the Museum of Care has been inactive. In 2025, we are planning to revive it by filling it with essays, articles, as well as books. We are starting with the text “Mutual Aid and The Grapes of Wrath” by John R. Eperjesi.
AptArt exhibition at Museum of Care
Last year, the David Graeber Institute opened its second Apt Art (APT / ART) exhibition entitled “Make Carnival Not War.” This year we continue the “Carnival is Not War” dialog by offering collaborative work with visual artists
Poster Project
We are grateful to the 14 artists: Ogut Ahmet, Mandy El-Sayegh, Chris Haughton, Joan Cornellà, Rafaela Drazic, Frank Arbelo , Dima Kashtalyan, Zbyněk Baladran, Clive Russell, Gianluca Costantini, Mat Jones, Kolya Oleynikov, BOLOHO, Miles Glyn for taking part in international series of posters project created to celebrate the publication of The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World, a collection of essays by David Graeber, published by @fsgbooks and @penguinukbooks
These posters will be showcased in stores across the UK and USA thanks to FSG and Penguin, and they’ll also be available for purchase on @metalabel__
We hope that the upcoming publication of the book in different languages will make this poster available in the shops and streets of different countries.
News from the Estate of David Graeber
Here are some of the publications that have come out in Fall 2024:
Cities Made Differently, the first book of the illustrated series Made Differently, co-authored by David Graeber and Nika Dubrovsky, has been published with the MIT Press. We are happy to share the posters our designers made for this series — you can download and print them!
A collection of David Graeber’s essays, The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World, with forewords by Nika Dubrovsky and Rebecca Solnit,was released by FSG in November — and the English publication will soon be followed by several translations! The series of talks prepared by DGI, which we described at the beginning of this letter, will continue throughout the year.
In December 2024, The Dawn of Everything was released in Russian by Ad Marginem.
We are also developing the collection of profiles related to David’s books in different translations on davidgraeber.org. If you are a translator and you would like to have your profile on the website, send us your CV and picture us at estate@davidgraeber.org. See an example here!
Our Japanese friends Yuri Takahashi and Tatsuhiko Haga are writing a book about David Graeber’s work and ideas, especially about Batshit Construction. Haga has also translated David’s article Hostile Intelligence: Reflections from a Visit to the West Bank. We’re pleased to share it with you, now available on our website.
We look forward to seeing everyone at DGI and MoC!
Regards,
David Graeber Institute