Is social anthropology suffering from what I would call Geppetto syndrome, forgotten in favor of the puppet he developed?2 Geppetto is the emblematic figure of the human placed in brackets in the face of the non-human who is praised. Geppetto’s syndrome is that of the human being as secondary, to the detriment of the non-human, the wooden puppet. Geppetto is the one nobody cares about. Not even Pinocchio, really. He wants to go home and see his father, but is always turned away. When asked who Geppetto is, the answer is that he is either Pinocchio’s maker or his father. He is not defined by himself, but by Pinocchio. Geppetto is the one without whom nothing would have happened, and yet he is virtually absent. Would every human being be a Geppetto? Forgotten, diminished, even by his children - or almost.