Fight club

Curated by Nika Dubrovsky
This room is open to be copied. Here is how one can do it.

Opposition is True Friendship

William Blake

David Graeber asserted that human consciousness only exists in dialogue with others, and the myth of the individual “thinker-philosopher” is nothing but a myth. David himself was often subjected to public attacks and withstood them with fortitude. Our fights will be between real people, imaginary people, or real people played by actors. 

Fight Club was created in memory of David Graeber by his friends to:

1. To keep David’s deeply researched and humorous challenging of myths alive after his untimely death;
2. To counter the public debate initiated by the right-wings, which for fifty years dominated most of the public spaces – newspapers, television – and was thus most accessible to the masses. We lost it and we have to get it back!
3. To counteract the fake concept of identity politics and the “cancel culture”;
4. To remain cheerful and artistic in the face of all odds, contradictions, and misunderstandings.

The Fights

1. The first fight was a debate between Michael Hudson versus Thomas Piketty, hosted by RSA.
   
2. The Great Debt Debate Q&A session was hosted by Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College.
3. The fictional fights will pit David in the Afterlife (by Steve Keen), taking on foes who set up the myths he challenged during his life:
4. David Graeber vs Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau fight at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in May 2022
5. The art installation and a discussion space based on the fight at HKW will be shown in the Art Encounters Biennial in May 2023

Related Content

Below are videos of other fights and public clashes that we found in the media space. Publishing them here does not mean that we agree with either of them or want to do the same. Remember, you’re on the Fight Club page. Here we are looking for stuff to disagree rather than agree with.
Send us more examples!

*Blake’s quote was provided by Robin Taylor with comment: “I’d express it by saying that intellectual progress depends on constructive disagreement without hating the other person, but it’s difficult to get there in practice.”