Anthropology and the end of the world: conditions of possibility of contemporary anthropology

Abstract

All forms of life imply a commitment to staying alive – an intentionality. In the case of human beings, however, this ‘pre-occupation’ with life takes on transcendental aspects: human beings contemplate the possibility of ‘the end of the world’. As a human activity, scientific practice is not exempt from this concern to keep the apocalypse at bay. This essay investigates the conditions of possibility of contemporary anthropology, rooting them in the ethnographic gesture. The anthropology that is possible today is the anthropology of those who find within themselves the means to, step by step, raise themselves to ever broader levels of pre-occupation, thus carrying out the process of de-ethnocentrification.