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Flesh and Blood (2021)

David Graeber and David Wengrow Flesh and Blood November 2021 Adapted from chapter 12 of The Dawn of Everything, published in Harper's Magazine.

Existing debates almost invariably begin with terms derived from Roman law, which conceive of freedom as based on the power of the individual (by implication, a male head of household) to dispose of his property as he sees fit. As the historian Denys Delâge points out, while Wendat people who visited France were appalled by the torture exhibited during public punishments and executions, what struck them as most remarkable was that “the French whipped, hanged, and put to death men from among themselves” rather than external enemies. Public torture in seventeenth-century Europe created searing, unforgettable spectacles of pain and suffering to convey the message that a system in which husbands could brutalize wives, and parents could beat children, was ultimately a form of love.

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