By Hossain Cyrus
Hello Miss Dubrovsky,
I hope this email finds you safe and healthy. I have been thinking about writing this email for a long time. I couldn’t decide what to say or how to say, not because I didn’t know enough but because I felt too much and didn’t figure out how to do justice to the feeling I am to address.
With every photo of Mr. Graeber you post it becomes increasingly difficult for me to not to write this email.
I came to know Mr. Graeber’s work through my awakening to the realm of political reality. I got introduced to Marxism just after I graduated with an engineering degree. Owing to the poor state of education in social sciences in these so called ‘universities’ most people don’t get to explore the reality in full and get trained to focus on unimportant things like career, money, degrees etc. Mr. Graeber’s articulation of questioning the established assumptions shattered my understanding of the world and drove me to explore ideas on those new fronts he illuminated.
I am not much of a reader but I started watching his lectures on youtube and couldn’t stop for a long time. His historical grasp and sociological understanding in all of his theoretical formulations incited me to explore other disciplines like history, anthropology and the study of alternative social order in greater depth. Before coming across Mr. Graeber’s work I was familiar with Marxist ideas and was an ardent student of Marx and Chomsky. I felt like I figured out at least what is there to think and fight about. But Mr. Graeber’s discussions on value theory, debt and direct action was a domain that brought light on topics that were largely absent from the domain of political discussions – at least in Bangladesh, where I am from. I will always be in debt of Mr. Graeber’s works.
His sudden departure from our mortal world hurt a lot of fellow souls like me and created an unfathomable absence around us. Particularly in this juncture of our history his insights would be of incomparable significance and we will all miss them sorely. From the video footages and recollections of him it’s pretty clear to me how magical it could have felt to be in his company. I will always regret not having that fortune and will never understand how must it feel to not to have him in person anymore with us.
I would love to offer my friendship to you and invite you to visit Bangladesh whenever this pandemic is over. We will keep working to make the cry of emancipation heard all over the world. I will stop today with a revolutionary song from my culture.
— Hossain Cyrus
And the photos:
