“The Utopia of Rules” by has a fascinating chapter on the history and anthropology of fantasy, oriented around the idea that heroic societies did not predate bureaucracy but grew up symbiotically on the borders of bureaucratic empires
Conversation
this seems like an interesting and counterintuitive claim that makes sense: administration is very ancient, and heroic antibureaucracy might very well be a partially reactive tendency
1
5
so of course this comes through in our times as an interesting“dialectic” relation between bureaucracy and fantasy, like we escape bureaucracy into fantasy, but the fantasy is a shadow and has an “ideological” purpose
1
1
is this ... postrationalism?
1
2
so here we come to the roots of our fantasy literature, a reaction to the increasing total control of efficient rational disenchanted bureaucratic administration
1
1
5
if fantasy is a negation of bureaucratic administration, what kind of role could that fantasy play in maintaining the stability of that regime?
1
2
Game of Thrones seems like a particularly good example of this
1
1
4
but D&D and other fantasy worlds do in fact have prominent aspects of bureaucratic administration, and Graeber explores this interesting tension
1
1
Harry Potter’s magic is contained within a classic Victorian bureaucratic administration
2
4
