Universal

An essential tension has always existed within the human sciences, and particularly anthropology: to understand the different systems of thought from the inside, avoiding the imposition of one system of representations on another; but also to safeguard the possibility of universal knowledge, against the scattering of fragmented points of view. Cultural relativism tends to multiply specialised knowledge, and thus to increase a certain myopia. Moreover, it does not allow us to understand the permanent (and increasingly prevalent) phenomena of hybridisation, crossbreeding, borrowing and translation. The search for universals, which had been abandoned when it appeared to be the expression of “Western” ethnocentrism, appears once again desirable in the face of the fragmentation of knowledge which splits the image of man into a multitude of discontinuous appearances.