Scientific avatars or doing anthropology of (and against) our modern discontent

Abstract

The author analyses James Cameron's Avatar (2009) exploring the structures of feeling and the cosmopolitics responsible for the success of the film with audiences worldwide. Close attention is given to the study of two dominant possibilities of understanding indigenous alterity in the contemporary world: metropolitan alternativism and an alter-native cosmopolitanism. The second part of this article deals with recent anthropological debates that polarized the academic world in relation to the politics of recognition and the implications of cultural differences. The author concludes by discussing the politics of translation and the possibilities for critical theory from the perspective of scholars doing anthropological research from the Global South.