Parantropología, ¿indisciplina o subdisciplina emergente?: debates sobre las fronteras del conocimiento antropológico
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article critically examines paranthropology, arguing that its main value lies not in the consolidation of a new subdiscipline but in its role as an indiscipline that exposes the political and historical boundaries of anthropological knowledge. Research on the paranormal serves as a case study to explore the tense and often silenced relationship that anthropology has maintained with anomalous experiences. Methodologically, the article develops a theoretical analysis beginning with an interview with anthropologist Jack Hunter, whose perspective is placed in critical dialogue with various strands of contemporary anthropology. This dialogue deconstructs the apparent marginality of the paranormal, revealing it instead as a deliberate disciplinary construction. The analysis concludes that this indiscipline functions as a methodological opening that compels a reconsideration of the false dichotomy between ontology and politics. By taking seriously agencies that resemble but are not identical to the human, the question of being becomes inseparable from the question of power. This approach, the article contends, is particularly relevant in a re-enchanted contemporary world where transgressing modernity’s boundaries has become a central object of study. The originality of the work lies in moving beyond a description of paranthropology as an emerging field to offer a critical reflection on anthropology’s own limits. The text presents an original thesis on the politics of ontology and establishes connections—new within the Spanish-speaking academic context—between theoretical debates rooted in the Anglo-Saxon tradition and the ethnographic sensibilities of Latin America, a field of reflection that has so far found limited resonance in our language.
Institutions: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Universidad de Sevilla
Language: Portuguese
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4415728529
FWCI:
Cites:
Cited by:
Related to: