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Although not directly related to David Graeber’s book Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, the narrator in the video uses insights from On Kings and The Dawn of Everything to analyze Joseph Campbell’s views that all hero myths have the same basic plots. Anthropologists are interested in analyzing myths and anarchist anthropology is specifically interested in how myths and our views on them help in maintaining the existing hierarchies. The narrator specifically focuses on the concept of stranger-kinship from On Kings as well as the critique of academic bias in The Dawn of Everything to challenge Campbell’s argument. In addition, David Graeber briefly mentions Joseph Campbell in a footnote of Bullshit jobs: A theory while discussing how the rise of hierarchical executives in movie production had the effect of movies ending up largely mediocre with the movie makers now using Campbell’s argument for a universal archetypal hero narrative to design movie plots, even if most scholars of the epic myths consider Campbell’s argument as merely “an entertaining curio.”
In On Kings, David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins explore how traditional societies legitimize political authority by turning strangers into symbolic relatives through rituals, myth, and kinship systems. This ends up justifying the ruler’s right to govern and use force, even though they are not originally part of the social group. The video’s core concept of the statist stranger-king myth is implicitly connected to the concept of stranger kinship in On Kings. The statist stranger-king myth is said to be a story type that seeks to justify the violence of the ruling classes, including statists, soldiers, and police. These myths present a “right kind of person” who can justly wield overwhelming violence and encourage people to identify themselves with these authority figures. The hero concept of Campbell can be therefore considered as a statist stranger-king myth.
Additionally, in The Dawn of Everything, Graeber and Wengrow criticize the tendency of historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists to interpret their findings through the lens of their own culture and position within society. According to the narrator, Campbell’s focus on the hero concept can be seen as the result of his own position as a Classics professor.
The video thus subjects myths and stories to a critical lens informed by the contributions of David Graeber, David Wengrow and Marshall Sahlins.