Envisioning Logging Camps as Site of Social Antagonsim in Capitalism: An Anishinaabe Example from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Capitalism’s Cracks" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Slovenian Marxist philosopher, Slovoj Zizek has observed a curious paradox within western pop culture and society that “it’s much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.” This paper presents an archaeological case study for imagining alternatives to living in capitalism. The case study involves an early 20th century Anishinaabe logging camp located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I argue that logging camps represent sites of social antagonism between the relations of abstract labor and those of living labor, which resist the full subsumption of social life to the logic of capitalism. This paper is premised by the assumption that historical agents do not metaphorically step into the future, but rather back into it, looking to the past in order to visualize social alternatives for the future that inform social actions in the present.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Historical Archaeology of Capitalism’s Cracks

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 959