David Graeber's rhythm of developing thought: On poetics, imagination, and estrangement

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of David Graeber's work following the methods proposed by Antonio Gramsci of exploring Marx's work in search of “the leitmotif, the rhythm of developing thought, must be more important than single random statements and detached aphorisms.” Adopting this Gramscian approach, I argue, allows us to dispel frequent critique of Graeber's alleged idealism by recovering how Graeber's reflection on possibility and alternatives operated by decentering the distinctions between the ideal and the material, while honing in the categories of imagination and estrangement. This move recovers Graeber's work as a project of developing anthropology as the art of the possible, an enterprise directed at recovering, understanding, and offering social, economic, political, and conceptual alternatives.