The evolution of societies and parenting at the heart of a work by Antoinette Rychner

“During meetings organized with the public after the publication of my novel After the worldwho evoked a global collapse. Moreover, someone asked me what I could write after that. However, The question was very relevant. Moreover, Indeed. For example, imagining a future when you have described a horizon where the conditions of existence on earth are compromised seemed almost impossible, “says Antoinette Rychner.

It is then that a friend recommends reading a work which will be for her “a real political shock”: In. Similarly, the beginning was … a new story of humanityco -written by American anthropologist David Graeber and British archaeologist David Wengrow.

Shoved preconceived

“In this essay, they jostle the received ideas on the evolution of human societies, often described as evolving by development stages determined by their technologies and modes of organization. It is generally imagined that humanity has passed from the status of hunter-gatherers to that of farmers. then to industrialized urban societies. However, it is not always true. Some companies have known agriculture, but have been guessing.”

Everything becomes possible then possible: “I understood that we have the capacity to choose between various options. and that we are not condemned to follow a path of evolution drawn in advance. We can consciously examine what is available to us, decide what is desirable or not. Even the concept of progress deserves to be questioned.”

A text with feminist accents

Thus was born My forestafter months of research. The story takes place in an indefinite time, which could as evolution societies parenting heart work well be prehistory as a post-apocalyptic future. Two communities of hunter-gatherers maintain work links, but also of cross-procreation. An ancestral organization that some will question.

The opportunity also to reflect on social organization around procreation. sharing parental investment, a theme that crosses the whole of Antoinette Rychner’s work.