Abstract

Through his work, David Graeber intended to contribute to what he saw as the main project of anthropology, namely, to deconstruct established ways of seeing modernity through an awareness of the variety of human experience. More than a mission, anthropology would have a potential to explore and deploy: that of nourishing our imaginary of difference and cultivating an awareness that things could be otherwise. Beyond this intention, the Graeberian proposal, oriented by the principle of multiple possibilities, rests on several specific theoretical-ideological assumptions that this article sets out to critically debate. Starting from the analysis of the analogies and translations that Graeber made between different historical-cultural experiences (between ethnological cases presented in anthropological literature and our contemporary world), this contribution investigates the implications of Graeber’s use of anthropology on the conception of freedom – between choice and conditioning, will and structure – when we inscribe it in a spatial and temporal perspective. The article starts with an analysis of his political reflection on the present, moves on to some of his revisitations of classical anthropology on power, and concludes with some insights from my own fields of research in West Africa, without renouncing each time to recall the critical points of his proposals.