At a time when eugenics is resurgent in public health and tech capitalists intent on evolving beyond the human talk in colonial metaphors of inevitable progress through competitive individualism, The Mutual Aid of Language argues that human language could not have evolved in the survival of the fittest story to which they’ve reduced human nature. Language rather requires our mutual aid and tells a different story of our past and future. This event will feature a book talk sketching anthropological and anarchist critiques of evolutionary egoism and illustrating the anarchic organization language through analysis of videorecorded interactions. We’ll then facilitate an open discussion on the place of conversations in organizing strategy and as everyday tactic for prefigurative social change.

Mark Sicoli works as an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia on Monacan Land in Charlottesville, where he teaches on Language Evolution, Multimodal Interaction, History of Linguistic Theory, and Anthropology and Anarchy. He researches language in everyday interactions and collaborates for Indigenous language revitalization with Zapotecan people of Oaxaca, Mexico, and with Tribal Nations of Virginia. He is author of Saying and Doing in Zapotec // Decir y Hacer en Zapoteco.