{"id":37422,"date":"2021-10-27T11:31:05","date_gmt":"2021-10-27T10:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ankegroener.de\/blog\/?p=37422"},"modified":"2021-10-27T11:31:05","modified_gmt":"2021-10-27T10:31:05","slug":"tagebuch-dienstag-26-oktober-2021-everything-gotham-going-through","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ankegroener.de\/blog\/?p=37422","title":{"rendered":"Tagebuch Dienstag, 26. Oktober 2021 \u2013 Everything, Gotham, Going Through"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vor einigen Tagen vertwitterte ich schon einen Link zum Atlantic<\/em>, wo ein Buch von David Graeber<\/a> und David Wengrow<\/a> sehr gut besprochen wurde. \u201eHuman History Gets a Rewrite<\/a>\u201c rezensiert das Werk The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Der Artikel fasst gut zusammen, was ein anderer Blick auf die Menschheitsgeschichte bieten k\u00f6nnte:<\/p>\n

\u201eThe Dawn of Everything<\/em> is written against the conventional account of human social history as first developed by Hobbes and Rousseau; elaborated by subsequent thinkers; popularized today by the likes of Jared Diamond, Yuval Noah Harari, and Steven Pinker; and accepted more or less universally. The story goes like this. Once upon a time, human beings lived in small, egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers (the so-called state of nature). Then came the invention of agriculture, which led to surplus production and thus to population growth as well as private property. Bands swelled to tribes, and increasing scale required increasing organization: stratification, specialization; chiefs, warriors, holy men.<\/p>\n

Eventually, cities emerged, and with them, civilization\u2014literacy, philosophy, astronomy; hierarchies of wealth, status, and power; the first kingdoms and empires. Flash forward a few thousand years, and with science, capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution, we witness the creation of the modern bureaucratic state. The story is linear (the stages are followed in order, with no going back), uniform (they are followed the same way everywhere), progressive (the stages are \u201cstages\u201d in the first place, leading from lower to higher, more primitive to more sophisticated), deterministic (development is driven by technology, not human choice), and teleological (the process culminates in us).<\/p>\n

It is also, according to Graeber and Wengrow, completely wrong. Drawing on a wealth of recent archaeological discoveries that span the globe, as well as deep reading in often neglected historical sources (their bibliography runs to 63 pages), the two dismantle not only every element of the received account but also the assumptions that it rests on. Yes, we\u2019ve had bands, tribes, cities, and states; agriculture, inequality, and bureaucracy, but what each of these were, how they developed, and how we got from one to the next\u2014all this and more, the authors comprehensively rewrite. More important, they demolish the idea that human beings are passive objects of material forces, moving helplessly along a technological conveyor belt that takes us from the Serengeti to the DMV. We\u2019ve had choices, they show, and we\u2019ve made them. Graeber and Wengrow offer a history of the past 30,000 years that is not only wildly different from anything we\u2019re used to, but also far more interesting: textured, surprising, paradoxical, inspiring.\u201c <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bitte lest einfach den Rest der Rezension, das klang n\u00e4mlich alles spannend. Eine Frage, die bei mir allerdings sofort im Hinterkopf aufpoppte, war: Wird auch die Neuerz\u00e4hlung eine Geschichte von gro\u00dfen M\u00e4nnern, die gro\u00dfe Taten vollbringen? Oder anders: Wie sieht es mit der Betrachung von weiblicher Geschichte aus? Davon steht in der Besprechnung leider nichts.<\/p>\n

Ich musste an ein anderes Buch denken, das ich seit gef\u00fchlt zehn Jahren mit mir herumtrage und nie durchlesen werde, weil es irre dick ist. Ich habe es auf Papier und ernsthaft irgendwann als eBook gekauft, damit ich es unterwegs lesen kann, denn es wiegt gesch\u00e4tzt drei Kilo (eat this, Infinite Jest<\/em>). Daher las ich, gerade in der Zeit, als man noch in Fu\u00dfballstadien konnte, gerne in diesem Werk \u00fcber die Geschichte der Stadt New York bis 1898<\/a>. Dort stie\u00df ich erstmals bewusst auf andere, funktionierende Gesellschaftsordnungen als die, in der ich gro\u00df geworden war.<\/p>\n

Das Buch erw\u00e4hnt die \u00dcberraschung der ersten niederl\u00e4ndischen Kolonialisten (Frauen kamen erst sp\u00e4ter), als sie auf die Ureinwohner trafen, die sich so ganz anders organisiert hatten als die Europ\u00e4er. Seit mindestens 6500 Jahren lebten Menschen in der Gegend des heutigen New York (\u201esecond generation of human residents\u201c). Ungef\u00e4hr 500 v. Chr. lernten sie den Umgang mit Pfeil und Bogen, begannen zu t\u00f6pfern und bauten K\u00fcrbisse, Sonnenblumen und vermutlich Tabak an. Als die Europ\u00e4er in Nordamerika ankamen, lebten ungef\u00e4hr 15.000 Lenape<\/a> im heutigen Stadtgebiet und vermutlich bis zu 30.000 weitere Menschen im Gro\u00dfraum des heutigen New York.<\/p>\n

\u201eThese weren’t the well-defined, organized \u201atribes\u2018 or \u201anations\u2018 that populated the imaginations of European colonizers. Except under very unusual circumstances, the Lenapes identified themselves primarily with autonomous subgroups or bands consisting of anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred people. Nor did they reside in \u201avillages\u2018 as that word was understood by Europeans, but rather in a succession of seasonal campsites. In the spring or early summer, a band could be found near the shore, fishing and clamming; as autumn approached, it moved inland to harvest crops and hunt deer; when winter set it, it might move again to be nearer reliable sources of firewood and sources of smaller game.\u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Weil die Ureinwohner:innen keine festen Wohnsitze hatten, waren ihre Unterk\u00fcnfte schnell aufzubauende Langh\u00e4user, in denen mehrere Dutzend Familien miteinander lebten. H\u00e4usliche Ger\u00e4tschaften, Werkzeuge und Waffen waren einfach konstruiert und gering im Gewicht, um besser transportiert werden zu k\u00f6nnen. Die niederl\u00e4ndischen Kolonialisten stellten erstaunt fest, dass die Natives<\/em> ihre Eisent\u00f6pfe verschm\u00e4hten \u2013 sie waren zu schwer. Die Nicht-Sesshaftigkeit sorgte auch daf\u00fcr, dass sich kein Besitz entwickelte und weniger M\u00fcll produziert wurde, weil sich keiner ansammeln konnte \u2013 jedenfalls theoretisch: \u201ePearl Street in lower Manhattan would get its name from the mounds of oyster shells left by Lenape bands along the East River shore.\u201c Weil man sich st\u00e4ndig neu niederlie\u00df, wurden W\u00e4lder und B\u00f6den nicht bis zur Besinnungslosigkeit ausgenutzt, sondern hatten Zeit, sich zu erholen, bis sie f\u00fcr die Menschen wieder reich genug waren, um sich dort erneut niederzulassen.<\/p>\n

\u201eLenape bands prepared and maintained their woodland planting fields by the slash-and-burn method, clearing out but the largest trees and bushes, then burning off the rubbish and underground every spring. This brought fallow land into cultivation quickly and returned essential nutrients to the soil, extending its productive life well beying the two or three years possible with the European system of crop rotation. […] The abundance that so amazed early Europeans was thus no mere accident of nature, for \u201anature\u2018 was an artifact of culture as well as geology.\u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Was die Kolonialisten am wenigsten verstanden, war die Abwesenheit von Klasse und Besitz.<\/p>\n

\u201eBy custom and negotiation with its neighbor, each Lenape band had a \u201aright\u2018 to hunt, fish, and plant within certain territorrial limits. It might, in exchange for gifts, allow other groups or individuals to share these territories, but this did not imply the \u201asale\u2018 or permanent alienation known to European law. In the absence of states, moreover, warfare among the Lenapes was much less systematic and brutal than among Europeans.\u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dazu kam noch, dass die Gesellschaft der Lenapes matrilinear organisiert war.<\/p>\n

\u201eFamilies at each location were grouped into clans that traced their descent from a single female ancestor; phratries, or combinations of two or more clans, were identified by animal signs, usually \u201awolf\u2018, \u201aturtle\u2018 or \u201aturkey\u2018. Children belonged by definition to their mothers’s phratry: if she was a turtle, they were turtles. Land was assigned to clans, and the family units that comprised them, for their use only: they did not \u201aown\u2018 it as Europeans understood the word and had no authority to dispose of it by sale, gift, or bequest. If the land \u201abelonged\u2018 to anyone, it belonged to the inhabitants collectively.\u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Worin sich Europa und die Neue Welt nicht unterschieden, war die Aufteilung der Arbeit entlang von Geschlechterlinien. Frauen \u00fcbernahmen dabei den Gro\u00dfteil, sie waren f\u00fcr die Kinderaufzucht zust\u00e4ndig, das Kochen sowie die Arbeit auf dem Feld, womit 90 Prozent der Nahrung abgedeckt wurde. Zus\u00e4tzlich waren sie f\u00fcr die Errichtung und den Abbau der bereits erw\u00e4hnten Langh\u00e4user zust\u00e4ndig und trugen das Gemeinschaftseigentum von einem Ort zum anderen.<\/p>\n

Lenape-M\u00e4nner hielten diese Arbeiten f\u00fcr unm\u00e4nnlich und konzentrierten sich aufs Jagen und Fischen.<\/p>\n

\u201eEuropean observers were often appalled to find them relaxing after their return while the women toiled away in the fields, though this reaction had less to do with sympathy for the women than with ideas about \u201alaziness\u2018. Europeans believed that agriculture was a respectable occupation for men, while hunting and fishing were chiefly recreational: one was work, the other mere sport.\u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Die unterschiedlichen Ansichten dar\u00fcber, was ein gutes, sinnvolles Leben ausmacht, waren offensichtlich sehr unterschiedlich.<\/p>\n

\u201e[T]hat the Lenapes lived so contentedly in what looked to Europeans like a setting of wonderful \u201anatural\u2018 abundance made them all the more contemptible. How could people living in such a place fail so utterly to take advantage of the opportunities that lay all around them? They ought to have been civilized and rich, but they weren’t. It was only a short step to the conclusion that they didn’t deserve to be there at all.\u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Zitate aus: Edwin G. Burrows\/Mike Wallace: Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898<\/a><\/em>, Oxford 1999, S. 5\u201311.)<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Ich lese au\u00dferdem gerade einen Roman \u2013 wobei ich nicht wei\u00df, ob es wirklich einer ist oder ein fiktives Essay, es m\u00e4andert jedenfalls sehr: What Are You Going Through<\/a><\/em> von Sigrid Nunez, auf Deutsch \u201eWas fehlt dir<\/a>\u201c, hier eine sch\u00f6ne Rezension von Johanna Adorjan<\/a>, leider hinter der Paywall. Dieses Zitat sprang mich gestern an:<\/p>\n

\u201eGeorge Balanchine said, If you put a group of men on the stage, you have a group of men, but if you put a group of women on the stage, you have the whole world.<\/p>\n

If you put a group of women in a book, you have \u201awomen’s fiction\u2018.\u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vor einigen Tagen vertwitterte ich schon einen Link zum Atlantic, wo ein Buch von David Graeber und David Wengrow sehr gut besprochen wurde. \u201eHuman History Gets a Rewrite\u201c rezensiert das Werk The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Der Artikel fasst gut zusammen, was ein anderer Blick auf die Menschheitsgeschichte bieten k\u00f6nnte: \u201eThe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ankegroener.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ankegroener.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ankegroener.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ankegroener.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ankegroener.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37422"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.ankegroener.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37428,"href":"https:\/\/www.ankegroener.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37422\/revisions\/37428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ankegroener.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ankegroener.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ankegroener.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}