Reformulating politics, activism and ethnography. A sketch of a somatic and vulnerable anthropology

Abstract

This article offers a review of the some transformations taking place in recent decades in different activisms and in the way we understand the political subject, in both the Spanish state and the Basque context. Afterwards I propose an anthropological analysis with a triple theoretical approach: some theories about the body; ontological readings being made around the concept of vulnerability; and the recovery of the concept of “crisis of presence” by Ernesto de Martino. This framework will help us outlining a somatic and vulnerable ethnography addressing political actions and experiences, like silence, that generally are classified as negative, and that enables a diagnosis of reality that recovers and reformulates notions as interdependence, collective action or resistance.