david on homeless ness
david graeber on home less ness et al
via nika dubrovsky fb share:
An excerpt from the translation of “Homeless” by David Greber (translator Vladimir Petrov).
David always said that the main definition of a slave is a person without social connections, who is unable to take on social obligations. In this sense, in our atomized western society, almost everyone of us is a slave, because the only debts most of us can take and give are debts to the bank and state. And most of them are not freely chosen obligations, but imposed on us from the outside.
graeber enslavement law et al
Even if slavery did not follow the mass murders — although it was usually the case — it deprived a person of everything that made sense to his existence. His first consequence was the loss of human relations; however, at those times they talked more about the loss of familiar place. Slaves were called “lost” (the wave of faith): expelled from the lands of their ancestors, they ended up among those for whom they were strangers.
unauthorized home less ness et al
…
An astrologer once told me that these days people avoid low places out of fear of lolo. At night, spirits wander the lowlands — usually along streams and rivers that run through raw valleys — or hide in deep gorges. If so, it turns out that the slaves were sent to restless places, full of scattered memories and intentions, as well as forces that came from elsewhere. But even in such places, few people stayed for long.
notes/quotes from july 2025 article (via english translation):
An excerpt from David Graeber’s book, “Homeless: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar”
madagascar.. madagascar love et al.. same book as lost people et al..
In 1989, David Graeber traveled to Madagascar, where he conducted fieldwork in the rural community of Betafo, divided between the descendants of nobles and slaves. He wrote a book, “The Homeless,” about how local residents engaged in politics in the absence of formal institutions of power—we offer a short excerpt from it.
Since February 24, 2022, we have all found ourselves facing advancing barbarity, violence, and lies. In this situation, it is crucial to preserve at least the remnants of culture and uphold the values of humanism—including for the sake of Russia’s future. Therefore, the Gorky editorial board will continue to discuss books, reminding our readers that there is still room in the world for thought and fiction.
David Graeber. Homeless: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar. Moscow: Ad Marginem Press, 2025. Translated from English by V. Petrov
“As for the sufferings inflicted on the provincial inhabitants by the incessant wars, they defy description, for by means of battles, and still more by deception, since they were offered life and pardon if they would yield and submit, thousands and thousands of people were killed in cold blood, and their numerous wives, children and cattle were captured and reduced to slavery.
Mothers are separated from their young offspring and other relatives: they are separated and sent to different owners, so that they end up in different parts of the country and never see each other again, with the rarest of exceptions.
One officer, a true Christian, told me that the torments of hell could not be stronger than those experienced by these unfortunate people when they were separated from each other to be taken to different masters.
Their cries, weeping and lamentations, said this Christian, are almost capable of raising the dead from their graves to come to their aid…” (Annals of Raombana, A2, No. 5: p. 74 [693–696])
So wrote Raombana, secretary to Queen Ranavalona I, around 1855, in his historical work – in English, so that no one at court could read it.
For those captured and sold in the Imerina markets, slavery meant, first and foremost, the severing of all ties, love and family, a farewell to the times when they were at home, surrounded by relatives, friends, and loved ones, a parting with everything that held the greatest value in their lives. Even if enslavement did not follow mass murder—though this was usually the case—it deprived a person of everything that gave meaning to their existence. Its first consequence was the loss of human relationships; although, in those days, it was more often spoken of as the loss of a familiar place. Slaves were called “lost ones” (olona weri): driven from the lands of their ancestors, they found themselves among those to whom they were strangers.
oikos (the economy our souls crave).. ‘i should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.’ – gaston bachelard, the poetics of space
Even those slaves born in Imerina found it very difficult to establish strong ties to specific people or places. Slaves were always the most mobile segment of the population. Few lived with their masters. Moreover, free people and slaves were assigned different places to live: the former lived in towns and villages on the highlands, while the latter lived in hastily constructed huts in the lowlands, next to rice fields. One astrologer told me that people today avoid lowlands for fear of the lolo. At night, spirits wander the lowlands—usually along streams and rivers flowing through damp valleys—or hide in deep ditches. If so, it would seem that slaves were exiled to troubled places, full of scattered memories and intentions, as well as forces that came from elsewhere. But even in such places, few lingered for long.
The center of most slave villages were the huts of the oldest men and women. Younger slaves had no fixed residence, moving between villages throughout Imerina, sometimes belonging to different masters, meeting relatives, friends, and loved ones also scattered throughout the region. They formed the core of a murky, commercial, semi-criminal underworld, whose inhabitants were considered suspicious due to their mobility. Petty trade was outsourced to slaves. The overwhelming majority of robbers and bandits were slaves. Their mobility allowed them to disregard the orders of their masters, but at the same time prevented them from establishing a permanent presence. For example, no one could tell me where the slaves were buried. The little I was able to discover leads to the following conjecture: for most of them, improvised graves—essentially covered pits—were constructed near their settlements. Almost always, men and women of different origins were buried together. It was only several decades after the liberation that some families managed to raise the funds to build solid, substantial tombs.
Almost all the slaves freed in 1896 abandoned these villages and either returned to their homelands (if those villages still existed and the slaves could remember where they were), founded new villages, or moved to the cities. Those who remained did so primarily because of land grants. It’s worth remembering that in most rural communities like Betafo, a small number of wealthy families ruled the roost. After the arrival of the French, the scions of these families largely left the countryside, becoming doctors, engineers, or minor officials in the capital. However, they continued to be buried, for the most part, on their ancestral lands, which required them to maintain their holdings in these areas. Typically, they selected responsible middle-aged men from among their former slaves and offered them land plots on the condition that they become sharecroppers.
For others, gaining access to fertile land became an insurmountable problem. The “whites” were unwilling to sell them plots (their ancestors forbade it) or demanded exorbitant prices. Most Mainti families settled in Betafo thanks to sudden prosperity: a gift of land, a military pension, an ancestor’s marriage to a wealthy local heiress… If someone’s fortune smiled upon them, their relatives soon arrived, hoping to become as rich as they were. Sometimes this led to the flight of the “whites”: the more the Mainti prospered, the more Foci sons left the village. In several villages northeast of Betafo, no “whites” remained at all. But this was not the norm.
The desire to acquire land was driven by more than just economic considerations. Farming was not a particularly lucrative occupation. Furthermore, most former slaves continued to sell their labor even after acquiring land. The primary motivation was the desire to own land that could be passed on to their descendants. After acquiring such a plot, a person would consider building a tomb. The first substantial Mainti tombs in Betafo—located on elevated sites rather than in valleys—were built in the 1900s and 1910s. This cost a huge amount of money. Several families typically contributed to the construction of a tomb. It’s hard to imagine the complexity behind these simple earth and stone structures—the intricate plans, the bickering, the many days of monotonous and tedious labor. A tomb signified that a person’s descendants had a permanent residence and that the person buried within would be remembered after death.
It’s clear that tombs and the practices associated with them have different meanings for “black” and “white” people. Ancestors didn’t seem like a significant obstacle to those trying to find their place; history wasn’t too heavy a burden for those who had lost that place.
According to generally accepted anthropological definitions, “blacks” and “whites” share a common culture. Both speak the same language; differences in marriage customs, dress, respectful expressions, and musical preferences are minor. I have heard no mention of any distinctive Mainti customs. The differences between the two groups are determined by their different historical experiences.
Thus, the existence of slavery defines the “whites'” perception of their place in history. The scene with which this chapter opens—Merina soldiers, rifles in hand, separating families—can be seen as akin to original sin. Such endlessly repeated scenes led to hundreds of thousands of “lost men” settling alongside the “whites,” serving as a silent reproach to them. But after the defeat of the Merina army by the French, the images of soldiers and victims began to merge in people’s minds, and finally the word “soldier” became a symbol of the moral dangers inherent in any command relationship. From a modern perspective, this fact is instructive. If you want to understand how constant betrayals, massacres, and dispensations became possible, it’s worth looking at the command structures within which individuals completely abandon their own judgment and submit to others. Of course, this is not a coherent theory, but rather the existence of certain types of social relations, which are clearly felt but not translated into precise formulations. One way or another, this circumstance colors almost every reflection on history and strengthens the conviction that the world is often mixed with violence, that living people are subjected to terrible pressure.
For the descendants of the victims, history presents itself in a completely different light. Like wage labor, teamwork is considered an inevitable consequence of poverty: many “blacks” hire their close relatives or work for them. Attitudes toward ancestors also differ. Surprisingly, many Ohlona Mainti—especially male heads of households—accept the idea of the benevolent authority of ancestors, which for most “whites” is merely a reluctant veneer.
If we look at the stories of individual families, which are presented below, all this becomes even clearer. The greatest differences are observed between those families who managed to secure a plot in Betafo and make it their ancestral land, and those who settled permanently in foreign lands. These are stories of eternal dispersal and displacement, a kaleidoscope of images invariably revolving around the ominous figure of the Vazimba.
Antandrokombi
Two of the three most famous Betafo Mainti lineages come from the tiny, long-abandoned village of Antandrok’ombi, located on a strip of land near rice paddies north of Antaneti. According to early colonial records, three noble families together owned approximately half the rice paddies immediately surrounding Betafo, including all the land around Antandrok’ombi and most of the slaves there. After the slaves were freed, the heads of these families apparently selected the two most influential slaves and gave them the entire strip of land mentioned above. These were the “trusted slaves” mentioned by Ramanan (see Chapter 6): they remained close to their masters, were rewarded for years of repairing walls, collecting firewood, and delivering manure, and were given a secure position in the community—and assurances that they would continue to do so. Their names—Rainizanabohitra (born c. 1870) and Rainimanandro (born 1872)—are still known to almost all Betafas, as each is now a Great Ancestor of a distinguished lineage. The former, it seems, became a Catholic—at least, most of his descendants today are Catholic. In 1916, shortly after his death, his widow, along with several friends and relatives, built a tomb on the ridge above their village; it was named “Ambohimasina.” Two years later, another man, a Protestant, contracted to build his own tomb at a place called Ambohitrimaninana, located further east on the same high ridge.
That same year, 1918, the inhabitants abandoned Antandrokombi (out of fear of bandits, I was told). Most of them took refuge in Andrianoni, a quarter of Betafo, where most of the local Mainti already lived. Rainizanabohitra’s descendants, Catholics, resettled again in 1935 to the newly founded village of Antaneti, located on a high ridge above the site of their former village, and were living there when I met them—about sixty people in eleven houses. Rainimanandro’s descendants were still living in Andrianoni at the time. Moreover, Ingakhiraini, Rainimanandro’s son, was still alive.
Rainizanabohitra’s fortune was quickly divided among his four daughters. Ingahirayni, his father’s only son, soon became one of the wealthiest men in Betafo—certainly the wealthiest of the Mainti. He became the head of a very large family. Ingahirayni’s house—standing, as expected, north and east of the houses of his descendants—lived his wife and her childless brother. Nearby were two large houses belonging to Norber, Ingahirayni’s eldest son. During my time, construction began on a spacious brick house for his youngest son, Marten, who had recently become a mathematics teacher at the state high school in Arivonimamo. The remaining houses around these were set aside for daughters and grandchildren. This was the largest family in Betafo: seven households, all descended from the same patriarch. It is not surprising that Ingakhiraini was the only person in Betafo whom both the “blacks” and the “whites” considered to be the real Rai amandReni.
Curiously, those who belonged to these relatively successful lineages had almost nothing to say about their history. The ancestors of these people cultivated rice, built tombs, left descendants, and migrated from time to time. It’s also interesting that the descendants of Ingakhiraini achieved their status by being considered the most loyal and trustworthy of the old Andrian servants, but today they are considered the most embittered and suspicious of the Betafian “blacks”—we already know about Norbert’s relationship with Miadana. This paradox is well illustrated by two incidents from the past, which I was finally able to hear. One of them was recounted by Norbert himself. His family, he said, had moved to Andrianoni because of a close relationship between his father and a simple Andrian peasant named Razzaonera. Fearing bandits, Razzaonera persuaded his lover to leave Antandrokombi and helped him build a new house in Andrianoni, next to his own. The men later sealed their union with a blood oath. When speaking of their past relationships with the Andrians, all family members recounted this story. But it also has a dark side: after Norbert’s quarrel with Miadana, members of this particular family constantly reminded her of their ancestor (Rainimanandro himself or his father?), who was bound and thrown to the pigs. It could be argued that this amusing story itself serves as an indicator of the family’s success. It closely resembles the official histories of the Andrians: on the surface, everything appears peaceful, but beneath the surface, conflict and violence lurk.
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be you. 