ABSTRACT
A modal anthropology, which is an anthropology of modes, modifications and modulations, implies a mode of knowledge capable of accounting for the ductile and flexible character of sensible experience. A modal anthropology brings out the variations and fluctuations of our sensory but also intellectual behaviors. It tears us away from the speculative domain of metaphysics and restores the various forms of action and conjugation: the indicative, the optative, the conditional, the gerundive. It is on the basis of lines of fracture—outlined in the form of seven propositions in this chapter—that we can move toward another horizon of knowledge than the one to which we are still often accustomed. The propositions include: the illusions of the principle of arythmicity, to no longer fear the real, language as question, words that don't reify the subject, language for saying what exceeds it, against the sirens of irrationality, a resolutely critical form of thinking, and the necessary mediation of the aesthetic.
