Postmodern towards the Altermodern

Between 1995 after Geertz, Marcus, a re-emargence of Foucault's genealogies, Moore's subjects, Strathern's parts and wholes and Butler's performativity and her govermentality of pain, sometiems I feel there is no remaining gap one can escrutinize our new 'panopticon' from, the gaze has become far too ingrained in the current and also postmodern flexibility of exchanges about deconstruction of power and enlargement of our intellectual perspectives. With perhaps the rare solace of Nikolas Rose, the years between the turn of the Millenium and last year's financial crisis, have left me with one doubt, we are in period that although we recognise as postmodern it can not longer take on all the predicaments of postmodernity. Postmodernity has enlarged itself.

There were few attempts at defining changes of understanding theorisation within this period, for a short while the term 'naive ethnographies' came to define anthropological work that tried to reassess ethnographic approaches from new angles albeit less theoretically ingrained in the postmodern theories equally building upon these. In this period the idea of flexibility, multiplicity, engaggement, complexity of identities, de-territorialisation, post-capitalism, glboalisation came to dominate the vocabulary of ideas. The anthropology of globalisation is a good example of this period after naivety. But then, the term naive was not conducive, its connectivity failed to engage us. The anthropologies of x and z, and in particular of globalisation were built on the analysis of the aftertaste of postmodernity as a quality of taste (see earlier blog on taste).

Other anthropologies have kept happening during this period, of course, amongst them perhpas the most important have been the 'shared' and 'open' approaches to the production of anthropological knowledge on the Internet. This was a 'less perceived' period in terms of linear sequencing (i.e postmodernism, naive ethnographies, anthropology of globalisation), partly, and I am as responsible as any other anthropologist working for this media.

The Altermodern...

Let me start with the original concept in Art and then linking back to the period just before us...