Friday, June 19, 2026

Capgemini AI chief: Humans and AI don’t have the right chemistry — yet

Copyright Euronews
By Roselyne Min
Published on 19/06/2026 -

The innovation chief for the French IT consulting firm told Euronews Next why trust, regulation and a “plan B” for AI models will shape the next phase of AI adoption.

At VivaTech in Paris, companies are pitching their visions for artificial intelligence (AI), from AI agents to workplace automation tools.

But French IT consulting firm Capgemini says the harder question now is whether companies can make AI work "at scale".

“Not everybody will win with AI,” Pascal Brier, the group chief innovation officer of Capgemini, told Euronews Next.

Capgemini has declared 2026 its “year of truth” for AI, saying it needs to show that the technology can be scaled at the enterprise level and deliver real results.

The executive said companies were right to be excited about AI, calling it a technology that is “redefining the wider technology landscape”.

But Brier said many businesses had underestimated how long it takes to understand, implement and get results from AI.
RelatedCompanies are rushing into AI, but adoption is still lagging, a KPMG executive says
‘Human-AI chemistry’

In January, the French IT services group announced plans to cut up to 2,400 jobs in France.

Brier said the planned cuts were not directly linked to AI and that he does not believe AI will simply replace jobs.

“AI definitely is redefining the way you do business. That's for sure. I mean there are a lot of things that we're going to do differently. Now, the fact that you do them differently doesn’t mean that you’re going to get rid of people to do that,” he said.

Capgemini says building enough “human-AI chemistry” or trust between people and AI systems is necessary for the technology to be used properly.

“There is no way a technology can be successful if you don’t build that trust,” he said.

The executive said fear is part of the process when new technologies enter the workplace, but that workers often become more excited once they understand what AI can help them do.
Physical AI has yet to become applicable

For physical AI, which includes robots and machines that use AI software to operate in the real world, Brier said regulation should help create a “harmonious” environment where humans and machines can work together safely.

Rules should focus first on human protection and emergency controls, including ways to stop a robot immediately if something goes wrong, he said.

“You have to have humans, machines and robots coexisting in the same environment. That’s why you need some regulations,” he said.

But Brier argued that physical AI is still at an early stage, and rules should develop gradually so the technology has room to grow.

Unlike generative AI, which arrived quickly, physical AI will take longer to spread because it involves machines operating in real workplaces, he said.

“Nobody currently is running fleets of hundreds of robots,” he said.

“Regulation should also be progressive and try to adjust to the way this technology is evolving,” he added.

For now, Brier believes the biggest value for companies will come from agentic AI, where AI systems can carry out tasks and change how operations are run inside a business.

“This is really where AI is changing the way we do operations in a company, and that’s where we’re going to derive the biggest return on investment,” he said.

‘We don’t believe in total sovereignty'

Another key issue for companies is avoiding dependence on a single AI model or provider.

Earlier this month, the US government ordered Anthropic to suspend foreign-national access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, forcing the company to disable the two models for all customers to ensure compliance.

But the Capgemini executive said sovereignty should not mean cutting Europe off from global technology.

“We don’t believe in total sovereignty, which would mean isolation,” he said.

He said companies should instead think about sovereignty as a question of business continuity and risk management.

“There are something like 1,000 models available on the market,” he said. “They are small and big models. They are open source or private. They can be European, they can be US, they can be Chinese, so you can choose.”

The goal, he said, is to avoid depending on one technology and to “always have a plan B”.

For more on this story, watch the video in the media player

Robin Hood’s famed Sherwood Forest 1,200-year-old oak tree declared dead

By Theo Farrant & AP

Published on 19/06/2026 - EURONEWS

It’s not the first time the legendary oak has been declared dead. On previous occasions, fears were raised only for the tree to stubbornly leaf out again each spring. Not this year.

Sherwood Forest's Major Oak, the legendary ancient tree said to have sheltered Robin Hood, has died.

The tree failed to sprout leaves this spring, prompting the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) to confirm what conservationists had long feared.

Legend holds that the 13th-century outlaw used the oak as a hideout while evading his nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham, stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

No single cause killed it. But the RSPB says decades of strain - drought, climate change, and the weight of millions of visitors - left its root system starved.

"They (trees) go into drought stress. So even a healthy tree would be feeling the pressures of those long prolonged periods of dry. But the Major Oak also has those other complexities with it. So we have seen the sharp vitality to its root system over the last few decades," explains Chloe Ryder, the operations manager of RSPB Sherwood Forest Estates.

A 1,200-year-old Major Oak tree, where Robin Hood allegedly used as a hide out, stands in Sherwood Forest near Nottinghamshire, England, on 19 October 2007. Credit: AP Pho

Visitors over the past two centuries who viewed the tree's gnarled limbs and sprawling canopy in Nottingham compressed the soil, making it difficult for rain to reach its roots, the RSPB conservation group says.

The forest has been under threat for years and the tree has been rumoured to have died in the past - only to have the group confirm it was still alive. That is no longer the case.

British acting icon Dame Judi, who is a patron and ambassador for the Woodland Trust, said: "The Major Oak has provided inspiration for countless stories, poems, paintings and people for more than 1,000 years - all the while itself teeming with life and providing a home to an enormous range of wildlife."

She added: "I hope everyone who has been inspired by the Major Oak or another ancient tree reaches out to their MP and asks them to improve legal protections for these iconic and vital elements of our national landscape."

This image released by A24 shows Hugh Jackman in a scene from "The Death of Robin Hood." Credit: A24 via AP

But the fascination for the legend of Robin Hood shows no sign of dying. Movie star Hugh Jackman is playing the folk hero in his old age in a dark adaptation of the 17th-century ballad "Robin Hood's Death".

The film, titled The Death of Robin Hood , is directed by Michael Sarnoski and is being released in the United States on 19 June, by A24.

The Major Oak got its name after being mentioned in a book on oaks by Major Hayman Rooke in 1790 that led to the first wave of fans who flocked to the forest. Beyond folklore, the forest's oaks built ships for Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson's Royal Navy and timbered the roof of St Paul's Cathedral.

"The Major Oak will continue to stand at the heart of Sherwood as a natural monument for visitors to come and see, living on in the legend of Robin Hood and continuing to provide as much support to the forest’s ecosystem in death as in life" said Hollie Drake of the RSPB.

Saplings grown from the tree have also been planted around the world.

Obama Presidential Centre opens with star-studded ceremony and veiled jabs at Trump

BRUTALIST MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE

The Obama Presidential Center, seen ahead of the dedication ceremony, 18 June 2026.

Credit: AP Photo

By Theo Farrant & AP

Updated 19/06/2026 - EURONEWS

On stage, Barack Obama voiced his support for character, honesty, integrity, kindness, compassion and sense of duty, praising both Democrats and Republicans.

Former President Barack Obama, joined by three former presidents, celebrated the opening of his presidential centre in Chicago on Thursday, in an extraordinary event that brought together world leaders, A-list celebrities and athletes

The livestreamed, invite-only ceremony featured performances from Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Christina Aguilera, Bono, Common, John Legend and more.

Reflecting on his arrival in Chicago in 1985 as an untested community organiser, Obama said he could not have built the center anywhere else.

He noted that he met his future wife Michelle nearby, their wedding reception was within walking distance of the centre, their children were born in the neighbourhood and he launched his first political campaign not far away

Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama were joined on stage by their daughters, former presidents Joe Biden, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, former first ladies Jill Biden, Laura Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton, and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Notably absent was President Donald Trump, who in February described the $850 million (€740 million) centre as a "total disaster" in a social media post.

Although Trump was never mentioned by name during the ceremony, both Barack and Michelle Obama made veiled references widely interpreted as aimed at the current president.

Michelle Obama delivered the sharpest criticism, speaking just days after a UFC fighter called her "a man" during an event held at the White House to mark the United States' 250th anniversary.

In her speech, she praised her husband's presidency while condemning "the lies about your birthright" - a reference to the false "birther" conspiracy promoted by Trump more than a decade ago.

“How absurd it is to even imagine that you might have buckled under the pressure,” Michelle Obama said. “How absurd it is to imagine that you might have done anything but make our family and this entire country proud.”

Michelle Obama spoke directly to her husband when she stepped up to the podium. “Eight years in the crucible and not once did you melt in the heat. Not once did you let it harden you."

She also ticked off highlights from her husband's eight years in office, including ordering the raid that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, “standing up for marriage equality” and “listening to science.”

The former First Lady also referenced the current "anxious and divisive times” and warned against being cynical or complacent as “everything feels so upside down.” She pitched the center as “a respite from all that.”

Taking to the stage, the 44th president voiced his support for character, honesty, integrity, kindness, compassion and sense of duty, praising both Democrats and Republicans, including those he defeated.

“Every president here today, as different as we are, has tried our best to uphold values that John McCain and Mitt Romney believed in no less than I did,” Obama said. “It is our greatest inheritance.”

He also reflected on America’s founding as a “radical” experiment in self-government, recalling how the revolution rejected inherited power and hierarchy. He noted the founding promise that there would be "no kings or lords, no serfs or subjects, but only citizens."

What's inside the Obama Presidential Centre?

The nearly 20-acre campus sits in Jackson Park on Chicago's South Side, close to where Obama lived and first entered politics. It's expected to draw more than a million visitors a year.

As well as a towering museum covering the political and personal story of the nation's first Black president and first lady, the site includes a Chicago Public Library branch, basketball courts, a playground, an athletic centre and a picnic area.

“This is a safe space for people to come and, yes, reflect on the historic moments of this presidency and the campaigns, but also to come together as a community to think about what change you can bring to your own neighborhood," Josh Harris, the Obama Foundation’s vice president of public engagement, said during a tour of the campus.

Visitors to the museum will get to walk into a life-sized replica of the Oval Office.

Several of the ballgowns Michelle Obama wore as first lady are displayed on mannequins behind glass, including a black and red dress designed by Narciso Rodriguez that the former first lady wore on Election Night in Chicago.

Visitors will also get a chance to touch swatches of the fabrics, including the rose gold chain-mail Atelier Versace evening gown she wore at her final state dinner in 2016.

‘Held hostage’ by fossil fuels: How oil-rich nations influenced the UN climate conference in Bonn

By Angela Symons & Liam Gilliver

Published on 19/06/2026 - EURONEWS

Experts warn that fossil fuel interests and 'attacks on science' have stalled one of the most contentious climate debates once again.

Mid-year UN negotiations in Bonn were pushed into overtime last night, as countries failed to agree on a financing deal to help developing countries adapt to climate change.

Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) Simon Stiell called out the “you-first-ism” of nations refusing to deliver commitments before others do so.

“There remain significant divides, and significant work for the intersessional period ahead,” he added.

While some progress was made on the ‘Just Transition’, which aims to ensure that the benefits of moving away from fossil fuels are shared fairly, the talks were overshadowed by questionable interests and growing scrutiny over who actually gets a seat at the table.

Some argue that the Bonn talks were frustrated by a “small group of fossil fuels interests” attacking the science of climate change behind closed doors, French news agency AFP reports.

The allegations have been made by delegates representing the EU, Switzerland and dozens of developing nations.

“There are powerful interests desperate to protect their wealth and influence,” says Fiji’s head of delegation Sivendra Michael. “We are seeing certain countries holding the process hostage as vulnerable people suffer heat stress, king tides [the highest predicted high tide of the year at a coastal location] and storms, drought and famine.”

Did fossil fuel interests block progress at the Bonn climate conference?

As well as sending government officials, nations attending UN climate talks can bring non-governmental representatives in their delegations. This could include Indigenous leaders, youth delegates, academics and business representatives – some of whom may represent fossil fuel interests.

Bonn suffered “coordinated attacks across the negotiation rooms by the small number of fossil fuel interests,” according to Manjeet Dhakal, an adviser to the 44-nation Least Developed Countries bloc, who did not single out any country by name.

The Earth Negotiations Bulletin, which released daily reports on the negotiations, says India and the Arab Group – which includes oil-rich Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait, among others – opposed attempts to call for scientific bodies like the UN’s IPCC to counter climate change misinformation, as they said it could be used to discredit genuine scientific debate.

Similarly, an attempt by the UK and EU to remove a reference to “varying perspectives” on the concept of climate tipping points was opposed by Saudi Arabia and coal-dependent India, who argued that the issue is neither settled nor clear.

India further suggested deleting a reference to “irreversible changes” and opposed a text on limiting the magnitude and duration of the “overshoot” past the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit – something that most delegates, including the EU, were pushing for.

Scientific findings are clear that faster emissions reductions – which could keep the 1.5°C target within reach – are necessary, feasible and will bring major benefits for health, energy security, jobs and affordability, says Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe.

On Tuesday (16 June), the chair and chief negotiator of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) said she was “extremely troubled by the attempts to delink and undermine the best available science” at Bonn, AFP reports.

Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, argues that an “unrelenting war on climate science” took place in Bonn to try to erode warming targets.

“But we refuse to let these rooms become detached from the Pacific’s reality, where a breached 1.5°C will drown our history and displace our heritage, as saltwater bleeds into the Vanua (land) that has sustained us for generations,” he adds.

Prospects of a fossil fuel phaseout at COP31

These frustrations are familiar territory for UN climate talks, which require unanimous consensus on decisions.

Last year’s COP30 in Brazil drew criticism when it ended with a final text that avoided any roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels – despite becoming a flashpoint discussion.

This result prompted the launch of the first international conference dedicated to mapping a fair and orderly transition away from fossil fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, earlier this year, which was positioned as complementary to COP and explicitly excluded fossil fuel lobbyists. Donald Trump was also snubbed from the event.

“Enthusiasm around a just transition away from fossil fuels keeps building, thanks in no small part to the recent Santa Marta, Colombia conference and the Brazilian COP Presidency’s forthcoming roadmap,” says David Waskow of the World Resources Institute.

“Expectations are mounting for countries to craft their own tailored national roadmaps to shift off fossil fuels.”

‘We came here to negotiate a better future’

AOSIS worries that countries have not laid a strong enough foundation for success at COP31, which will be held in Türkiye in November.

"We came here to negotiate a better future,” says Marshall Islands climate envoy Tina Stege. “We’re in the midst of an energy crisis, risking an overshoot of 1.5°C with continued fossil fuel dependence that hurts us all, but especially the most vulnerable.

“Here in Bonn we’ve seen attacks on science, and we’ve seen a push to counter those attacks - from the islands, but also from so many others. The science tells us we need 1.5°C; it tells us we need to close the finance gap; it tells us the future will be safer, healthier, and more liveable if we take bold decisions. It’s time we listen."

From Pompeii to Évora : invisible solar for heritage sites

By Gregoire Lory & Diego Giuliani
Published on 19/06/2026

EURONEWS

Solar panels disguised as ancient Roman tiles or designed to blend into historic skylines. Pompeii and Évora are proving that heritage preservation and sustainability can go hand in hand.

Each year, millions of tourists from around the world visit Pompeii. They admire its frescoes and archaeological ruins, but few of them will ever notice the solar panels installed on the roof of the ancient Roman Villa of the Mysteries.

On one side, "it looks just like an ancient Roman tile. But if we look at it from behind, we can see that it is actually a small photovoltaic panel," explained Gabriel Zuchtriegel, Pompeii Archaeological Park Director.

"It generates electricity to illuminate this villa, and a large share of the energy needed here comes directly from the roof installation," he added.

While Pompeii is considering extending this solution to other areas of the archaeological park that are far from the electricity grid, the city of Évora, in Portugal, has also adopted similar technologies, avoiding the visual impact of conventional solar panels like these. On the rooftop of the City Hall, some shingles are slightly clearer.

"They are not normal shingles," said Humberto Queiroz, EDP R&D Centre and Project manager. "They are made of a semi-transparent epoxy material with solar cells embedded in the middle of it, which generates electricity for the self-consumption of this building."

The area has around 20 kWp (kilowatt peak) of PV shingles, designed to blend into the building's landscape architecture and protect the heritage aspect of Évora.

Since 1986, Évora's historic centre has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. PV shingles are among the solutions through which the European project POCITYF is helping the city reconcile heritage preservation with the modern challenges of sustainability.

"Évora is a World Heritage city and, like most historic cities across Europe, it has the responsibility to preserve its historic centre and safeguard its cultural heritage," analysed Nuno Bilo, EU project coordinator at Évora Municipality.

"However, it cannot remain frozen in time. We also need to move forward and find solutions that enable historic cities—and in this case Évora—to address one of today's greatest challenges: decarbonisation."
'If it can work here, it can work anywhere'

Among the solutions developed to make this possible is one created by a small family-owned company based in north-eastern Italy. Matteo Quagliato, who works for Dyaqua, explained the process.

"The tile is made from a resin compound that forms the first layer. We then take the photovoltaic cells, which have already been soldered beforehand, and place them inside. After that, a second layer is added, made from a specially formulated compound. The final step is lowering the mould and removing the finished product: a resin tile containing the photovoltaic cells."

Solutions like this one and the different technologies adopted in Pompeii send an encouraging message to the rest of the world.

“The lesson Pompeii offers is that if this technology can work here, in a place that is so delicate, so closely monitored, so fragile, and so vast, then it can work anywhere”, said Gabriel Zuchtriegel.

Glass roofs integrating photovoltaic panels and solar canopies installed in the courtyards of schools in the historic centre are among the other solutions being tested in Évora. Together with Alkmaar in the Netherlands, the Portuguese city is assessing these innovations through the POCITYF project to evaluate their potential for replication across Europe.

Human Origins Destroys Core Fascist Mythology – OpEd

June 19, 2026
By Yann Perreau

How deep history challenges fascist myths of purity, hierarchy, and identity.

The deeper we explore humanity’s past, the harder it becomes to sustain some of the most powerful political myths of the modern world.

For more than a century, authoritarian ideologies have sought legitimacy in origin stories: pure people, ancestral homelands, primordial hierarchies, and civilizational destinies. Fascism, in particular, has always been obsessed with beginnings. Whether in Nazi fantasies of Aryan ancestry, myths of ethnic continuity, or contemporary narratives of demographic replacement and civilizational decline, the past is transformed into a source of authority. History becomes destiny. Origins become a source of legitimacy.

Yet archaeology, anthropology, genetics, and evolutionary science increasingly tell a different story. Research across these fields has challenged older assumptions about purity, hierarchy, and human nature. Deep history reveals migration rather than isolation, cooperation rather than perpetual conflict, and experimentation rather than inevitability.

Few 20th-century thinkers saw this more clearly than Georges Bataille, who observed that competing visions of the past often conceal varying perspectives of humanity.

Better known today for his writings on eroticism, sacrifice, and transgression, French philosopher Bataille was also one of the first major European intellectuals to recognize that prehistory could serve as an antidote to fascist mythology. During the 1930s and 1940s, when fascist movements were mobilizing myths of origin on an unprecedented scale, he turned to cave art, ritual, and the earliest traces of human life, immersing himself in the latest archaeological, anthropological, paleontological, and sociological research.

His writings on prehistory drew extensively on the discoveries and debates of his time, delving into philosophical, anthropological, and political interests at once. What distinguishes humans from other animals? How did symbolic thought emerge? What forms of community existed before states, nations, and organized religions? These questions acquired a particular urgency during the rise of Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany, when competing visions of humanity became a matter of life and death.

Studying cave art and the discoveries emerging from sites such as the Lascaux Cave in France, Bataille became fascinated by a simple fact. The artists who painted the walls left no names. They founded no dynasties. They erected no monuments to rulers or conquerors. But they created some of the most extraordinary images in human history.

For Bataille, the lack of names was not a footnote; it was the point.

The caves revealed forms of collective creation that preceded authorship, ownership, and sovereignty. Art appeared not as an expression of individual genius or political authority but as a shared symbolic activity through which a community understood itself and its place in the world.

Instead of fascism’s cult of leadership, Bataille discovered a humanity whose earliest masterpieces emerged from participation rather than domination, anonymity rather than glory, and collective creation rather than the cult of personality.

The political implications of these observations became increasingly difficult to ignore during the rise of the totalitarian regimes that would engulf much of Europe and Asia. In his 1933 essay “The Psychological Structure of Fascism,” Bataille analyzed the attraction to sovereignty, authority, and charismatic leadership. In 1936, he founded Acéphale, an anti-fascist intellectual group whose symbol was a headless human figure.

The image was deliberately provocative. Against the Führer, Il Duce, Stalin, and every cult of leadership, Bataille proposed a humanity without a head. The figure was less of a political statement than a symbolic reversal of the principles celebrated by totalitarian movements. Against sovereignty, he imagined forms of collective existence that could not be reduced to a single authority. Against hierarchy, he emphasized participation, reciprocity, and shared experiences.

Prehistory became important not because it provided an alternative mythology, but because it revealed a past that resisted mythological simplification. Bataille turned to caves such as Lascaux as they seemed to preserve traces of human existence before nations, before states, and before centralized authority. What he found there was not an original people or an ancestral race, but forms of collective life that escaped the categories through which modern politics often tends to understand itself.

Against Hobbes

In this sense, Bataille’s reading of prehistory amounted to a direct challenge to one of the founding myths of modern political thought. In Leviathan(1651), Thomas Hobbes famously described life before political authority as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Human beings, he argued, originally lived in a condition of universal conflict—a “war of all against all”—from which only a sovereign power could rescue them.

This image has shaped centuries of political theory. It continues to influence assumptions about human nature and social order. If conflict is primordial, hierarchy appears necessary. If competition is humanity’s defining characteristic, strong authority becomes easier to justify.

Yet few anthropologists, archaeologists, or evolutionary researchers today would recognize early human societies that were part of Hobbes’s description. Over the past century, discoveries from prehistory have gradually eroded the picture of humanity emerging from a primordial war of all against all. Instead, these findings have shed light on how the social bond preceded sovereignty.

Cooperation and Human Success

Research in the 21st century has begun to explain the reasoning behind this. Far from being a secondary achievement of civilization, cooperation was one of the conditions that made civilization possible. Human infants require years of care, and this knowledge needs to be transmitted across generations. Food sharing, communication, and reciprocity were not late cultural inventions. They were essential to survival.

Increasingly, researchers describe Homo sapiens as a uniquely hyper-cooperative species. In a landmark study published in the journal Nature in 2014, the authors argued that cooperative breeding and exceptional levels of social cooperation played a decisive role in the evolution of human cognition and culture. Shared childcare, collective learning, and social transmission enabled forms of cumulative culture unmatched elsewhere in the animal world.

Human beings did not become cooperative because civilization imposed cooperation upon them: civilization became possible because humans were already cooperative. American anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy makes a similar point in Mothers and Others, stating that networks of care extending far beyond biological parents helped shape human evolution. Humans survived because they learned to depend upon one another.

Developmental and comparative psychologist Michael Tomasello reaches a similar conclusion. In A Natural History of Human Morality, he argues that what distinguishes human cognition is not superior individual intelligence but the capacity for shared intentionality—the ability to coordinate attention, goals, and actions with others. Human intelligence, in this view, is fundamentally social.

A similar intuition reappears today in discussions about artificial intelligence (AI). Blaise Agüera y Arcas, an AI researcher, has argued that intelligence is not simply an individual property but something that emerges through communication, learning, and exchange. Language may be less of an instrument of individual advantage than a technology of collective intelligence.

While Hobbes saw society emerging from conflict, many contemporary scholars suggest that society was shaped by cooperation.

The Archaeology of Possibility

The same shift has transformed our understanding of political development. In The Dawn of Everything, authors David Graeber and David Wengrow challenge the familiar narrative of how human societies progressed through a fixed sequence—bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states—becoming more hierarchical at every stage.

Drawing on decades of archaeological research, they describe societies that repeatedly experimented with different political arrangements. Some adopted hierarchical structures only temporarily before abandoning them. Others alternated between centralized and decentralized forms of organization according to seasonal rhythms. Large populations sometimes existed without kings, standing armies, or centralized bureaucracies. These accounts make human history look less like a march toward the state and more like a field of political experimentation.

The implications of this outlook extend well beyond archaeology. If hierarchy is not inevitable, authoritarianism can no longer present itself as the culmination of human development. If human beings repeatedly invented different ways of organizing collective life, then political alternatives are not utopian fantasies. They are historical realities. The past does not reveal our destiny, but another possibility of how to exist.

Deep History Against Race

The anti-fascist implications of prehistory became especially visible during the 20th century.

As Nazi scholars attempted to transform archaeology into a science of racial origins, other researchers moved in the opposite direction. In Man Makes Himself, archaeologist V. Gordon Childe emphasized that human progress is a result of innovation, exchange, and collective invention, instead of a biological destiny. Anthropologist Franz Boas’s The Mind of Primitive Mandismantled theories of racial hierarchy and demonstrated that cultural differences were historical rather than biological. Ethnologist Paul Rivet’s studies of migration and the peopling of the Americas highlighted human circulation, encounter, and mixture over purity and permanence in the region. Working in different disciplines, these researchers arrived at a similar conclusion: the deeper one investigates human history, the less sustainable are the ideas of fixed origins and permanent identities.

Advances in the 21st century in genetics have further strengthened this conclusion. Ancient DNA research has transformed our understanding of the past as dramatically as the discovery of cave art transformed our understanding of prehistoric culture a century ago. Across Eurasia and beyond, genetic studies have revealed repeated episodes of migration, admixture, and exchange that challenge older narratives of stable and isolated populations.

Far from revealing isolated groups preserving fixed identities over millennia, genetics shows continuous movement and transformation. Even Homo sapiens bear the marks of encounters with other human groups, including Neanderthals and Denisovans.

The further we travel into the past, the harder it becomes to sustain fantasies of racial purity.

Why Bataille’s Thinking Remains Important

Prehistory does not provide a political program. It does not tell us how contemporary societies should be organized, nor does it reveal a lost golden age. The important point is not that prehistoric humanity was peaceful, egalitarian, or morally superior. Human violence is ancient. So are domination and conflict.

The lesson is something else.

Deep history undermines some of the stories authoritarian ideologies tell us about humanity. Against the myths of racial purity, it reveals a mixture of races. Against myths of primordial hierarchy, it reveals experimentation with political structure. Against myths of sovereign necessity, it reveals human cooperation. Against myths of fixed identity, it reveals transformation.

Bataille understood that prehistory was not simply about origins. It was also about what happens when origin stories lose their authority. Now, with nationalism and authoritarian politics again looking for acknowledgment in ancestry, identity, and destiny, deep history offers a different perspective. The further back we go, the harder it is for fascism to find validity in historical narratives. Instead, what comes into view is a history of movement and exchange, cooperation and shared invention.

Prehistory doesn’t excuse domination. It doesn’t erase it, either. It places domination in perspective. And at a moment when authoritarianism is once again on the rise, the deep past reveals something both humbling and reassuring: our greatest strength has never been purity or domination, but our capacity to cooperate, connect, and depend on one another.

Credit Line: This article was produced by Human Bridges.

About Yann Perreau
Yann Perreau is a writer, educator, contemporary art curator, and writing fellow for the Human Bridges project of the Independent Media Institute. He has published several books with French publishers on climate, anonymity, and more. His articles have appeared in many publications, including Le Monde, the London Review of Books, and Art Press. He has served as a cultural attaché for both the French Embassy in London and the French Consulate in Los Angeles. He holds an MPhil in art history from Paris's EHESS.
View all posts by Yann Perreau →

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for Georges Bataille

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for DAVID GRAEBER

Ritual, Power, And The Weekend Arena – OpEd

President Donald J. Trump and UFC CEO Dana White arrive at UFC Freedom 250, the mixed martial arts event produced by the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Sunday, June 14, 2026, on the South Lawn of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

June 18, 2026
By Gary M. Feinman

In a March 2026 paper published in the journal Science Advances, which focused on variability in governance along the autocratic-democratic axis, my coauthors and I found that one of the strongest associations for the 40 case observations, which were part of our study, was between the nature of rituals and the concentration of power.

For this global sample, autocratically organized societies were characterized by spectacles that foment fear and awe, while participatory rituals predominated in more democratically organized contexts. For example, in the region where I study (Oaxaca, Mexico), when governance was typified by distributed power relations, the pre-Hispanic rubber ball game was played in a large court adjacent to a broad, flat open plaza, the Main Plaza at Monte Albán, a space that could accommodate many of the settlement’s inhabitants. Later, however, as political power became more concentrated, the size of ball courts was reduced, access to them became more restricted, and some were even built immediately adjacent to the houses or palaces of ruling families.

Social scientists have long recognized that communal rituals are a universal human experience that binds people together in various ways. Spectacles, often rich in disorienting noise, shock, and awe, tend to captivate observers through the powerful figures at the center of the spectacle, who inspire fear and wonderment, reinforcing authoritarian cults of personality. In contrast, participatory rituals like communal dancing, singing, or chanting tend to instill camaraderie among participants, solidarity, and trust among those involved. As a student of history and a sports fan, the mirrored reflections of the past provide an analytical perspective about the final Knicks game on June 13, a sports agenda that cannot be ignored.

During the 2026 National Basketball Association playoff between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, Madison Square Garden, the storied home of the Knicks, once again became like a civic commons after a 53-year championship drought. The competitiveness of the Knicks during the playoffs elevated the space from merely being a site of entertainment to a participatory ritual arena. The crowd did not passively observe; it chanted, rose, groaned, anticipated, and collectively willed momentum into existence. One needed to only look at the faces in the stands—season ticket holders and first-timers, celebrities and subway riders alike—to notice that the sight was closer to what might be considered an integrative ritual: one in which meaning is not imposed from above but generated, often with spontaneity, among participants.

Basketball, by definition, is a team sport, but this is typified by the game that the Knicks currently play. It is not about consistent domination by a central figure. Even the most celebrated player, Jalen Brunson, depends on coordination, timing, and trust in his teammates. The drama unfolds collectively, and its outcome remains contingent on who makes a foul shot and who grabs a rebound. Participation matters—not just symbolically but materially. The arena amplifies the idea, however imperfectly enacted, that communal engagement shapes outcomes. And these outcomes transcended the arenas where the Knicks games were played, stimulating joy and collective actions, and bringing people together in the desire for a common outcome.

By contrast, the spectacle of an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, staged in a garish steel cage, on the grounds of the White House on June 14 operated on a fundamentally different ritual logic. It was not designed for mutual participation but for spectacle: with the concentration of attention onto a staged center, where one-on-one conflict and mayhem are distilled into physical dominance and symbolic submission. The audience’s role is not to join but to witness—to be awed, to see blood and hear pain, be unsettled, and ultimately to orient themselves toward the figures who command the stage and oversee the event.

The choice of venue was not incidental. The White House has long functioned as a site of state ritual. But traditionally, those rituals—press briefings, public ceremonies, even contentious protests beyond its gates—are tethered, at least aspirationally, to norms of decorum, accountability, and public engagement. Introducing a choreographed combat spectacle into that space shifts its symbolic significance. It recasts a locus of governance into an arena of performance, where the aesthetic of dominance and self-promotion, by a small network of cronies, overshadows any ethical prospect of leading to wider participation.

This is precisely the distinction our comparative work on governance and ritual helps illuminate. When power is broadly distributed, rituals tend to be inclusive, iterative, and co-constructed. They require participants to see one another as collaborators in a shared process, even when competition is involved. In contrast, when power is tightly concentrated, rituals often become spectacles—staged experiences that reinforce hierarchy, channel emotions toward a focal point, and reduce the audience to spectators instead of actors. The Knicks, for all the commercialism of modern sports, still lean toward the former model. Their playoff games invited identification not with an owner but with a collective—however abstract—called a team, a city, a fan base. Victory was widely shared across an entire metropolitan area, communally. The ritual binds laterally, person-to-person.

A UFC spectacle staged in the orbit of political power points in the other direction. It binds vertically. The emotional energy of the crowd is drawn upward and inward, toward a center that is insulated from participation. The unpredictability of sport is replaced by an orchestrated spectacle; even the violence, ostensibly raw, is framed and contained to produce maximum symbolic effect. None of this is to suggest that one form of ritual is wholly virtuous and the other entirely malign. Spectacle has always been part of human societies, and participatory rituals can exclude to the same extent as they can include. Madison Square Garden is not immune to hierarchy, nor is fandom evenly accessible. But the contrast remains as glaring as instructive because it reveals not just different entertainments, but different models of how people relate to power—and to one another.

At stake is more than this season’s recreational programming. Rituals, whether ancient ball games in Mesoamerica or modern sporting events in New York, are not peripheral to political life; they are constitutive of it. They shape how individuals experience belonging, authority, and agency. They encode assumptions about who acts and who is meant to watch. The event at the White House reinforces values such as “might makes right” and life is a “zero-sum game.”

Alternatively, in an era when democratic practices often feel attenuated, the spaces where participation is still enacted—even imperfectly—carry heightened significance, thereby fostering shared aims and emphasizing the potential win-win-win outcomes that interdependence and collaborative action can generate. The roar of a crowd that believes its collective voice matters stands in quiet contrast to spectacles that ask only for attention, passivity, and allegiance.

We would do well to recognize the difference.

Credit Line: This article was produced by Human Bridges, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

About Gary M. Feinman
Gary M. Feinman is the MacArthur curator of Mesoamerican, Central American, and East Asian anthropology, at the Negaunee Integrative Research Center.
View all posts by Gary M. Feinman →