El acto antropológico

La intervención como extrañeza

Abstract

The present text is a brief reflection on several crucial topics involved in the notion of intervention. It analyses the key notion of demand and the conditions that determine its intelligibility. However, there is an emphasis in the difference between those processes that evolved from a mythical, original moment of a demand, and those unleashed by an autonomous intervention, which has not been motivated by any explicit or implicit demand—as it is often the case of the anthropological intervention. The text develops the key notion of the anthropological act, as a theoretical point of departure that makes it possible to recognize the violence inherent in the intervention itself, its methodological and political implications and its relevance in a conception of power.