From an Ethics of Estrangement to an Anthropology in Life

Taking difference seriously is a key anthropological aim. Recent debates in anthropology surrounding the ‘Ontological Turn’ have brought to the forefront the need to recognise the extent of epistemological colonialism in anthropological accounts. Proponents of the Ontological Turn have suggested that to take difference seriously anthropologists should engage in recursive anthropology: enabling the concepts they encounter through fieldwork to reconfigure anthropological concepts. Where the OT stumbles is in failing to recognise that it is the entire orthopraxy of anthropology that needs to recursively be reconfigured when encountering difference. Herein we offer an experiment in allowing the way of knowing/being of laboratory theatre to affect anthropological orthopraxy, in this case a conference presentation. We argue that opening up the entire craft of anthropology to difference through collaborative processes offers a path towards decolonising anthropology and a method of enquiry that enables processual and ecological attention. The experiment we present aims towards developing a regenerative form of anthropology, attentive to histories of exclusionary relations of power of all sorts.