People, individuals and cyborgs: connections and theoretical-methodological extensions in the dialogue between anthropology and feminism

Abstract

The comparative method for a long time served as a basis for the methodological discussion in Anthropology. From this background, Marilyn Strathern stood out as a fundamental name in the theoretical field and made her ethnographies in Melanesia a key for comparison and opposition to the West. Writing in the mid-1980s and among the postmodern epistemological criticisms that shook the foundations of Human Sciences, the anthropologist relied on a theoretical-methodological movement that put not only ethnographic data in suspension, but also founding concepts of anthropological discipline . In this article, we return to Marilyn Strathern's methodological path to highlight her analysis strategies and the shifts in the notions of individual and society that she brought about by bringing anthropology and feminism closer together. At the same time, we seek to put their methodological exercise into practice and by bringing Donna Haraway and Judith Butler to the dialogue, we seek to highlight how the notions of partial connections, hybridism and cyborg creation can reveal expansions and enlargements in Strathernian theory itself.