Ripensare l’antropologia dopo L’alba di tutto. Una riflessione alla luce del dibattito accademico italiano

Damiano Morici

Abstract:

The publication of The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow set off criticism from a part of the international academic community. This article addresses the Italian reception of that book by cultural anthropologists, focusing on the debate that emerged in a forum published in the journal Rivista di Antropologia Contemporanea. The comparison of divergent opinions among the volume contributors highlights current epistemological and methodological tensions, such as the relationship between imagination and empirical verification, nomothetic ambition and relativistic sensibility, as well as the role of agency in historical processes. A specific focus is dedicated to the theme of agency and the dialectic between freedom and constraint vis-à-vis the works of Marshall Sahlins, former supervisor and mentor of David Graeber. This article also puts forward a reflection on anthropology as a «science of possibilities», capable of questioning the present through engagement with alterity and historical imagination. From this perspective, the heuristic value of The Dawn of Everything lies in its conflictual dimension, which fleshes out the theoretical assumptions and contradictions underlying contemporary anthropological research. Graeber and Wengrow’s work is thus read not as an all-encompassing theory, but as a critical standard capable of reopening the field of interpretative possibilities.