Afterword: Knot-work not networks, or anti-anti-antifetishism and the ANTipolitics machine

Abstract

In this paper, I explore what might count as political intervention in contemporary anthropological descriptions. In doing so I take a particular focus on the work of Bruno Latour, as the clearest exponent of a posthuman philosophy critiqued by some of the contributors to this special section. I argue that a posthuman philosophy guided by a rigid anti-anti-fetishism is in danger of failing to take seriously the experience of people for whom the adoption of a perspective that stresses the unique characteristics of human agency and relations is a matter of great political importance. The contemporary posthumanist claim that a disavowal of politics as it is currently configured is necessary to avoid an elitist disdain for our informants is examined from different perspectives, from which posthumanism itself might be viewed as an expression of precisely that elitist disdain that it professes to disavow.