Watch the recorded conference here.

Established histories of humankind reproduce imperial myths of civilization. A conference addresses the planetary crisis and the possibility of social change.

Is our current social order inevitable? In their book The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow have presented the outlines of a new human history. On the basis of recent and newly synthesised findings from archaeology, anthropology and the knowledge of resistance movements, brought together for the first time, they reconstruct the diversity of political forms of organization in past societies and revise numerous preconceptions about the history of the development of complex societies. The conference Die Zivilisationsfrage takes the publication of the book’s German translation in January 2022 as the basis for a radical revision of prevailing views of history – and for a new dawn. For after the illusions of Empire, Eurocentrism and Civilization, there is yet something to learn: What does it mean to be civilized?

Forensic Architecture director Eyal Weizman will contribute to Day 1 of the conference on Friday 27 May at 2.30pm in the section on Material Histories: Evidence Against the Standard Narrative – with presentations from Alain Schnapp, Liv Nilsson Stutz, Johannes Müller, Alfredo González-Ruibal and Mirjam Brusius.