Post-Human Anthropology

This article discusses recent performative ethnographic work in the Goth/Industrial music scene as the band "Blood Jewel"-http://www.myspace.com/bloodjewelband-and how through the medium of cyber space this has led to different kinds of engagements with ethnographic "subjects." This experience is the context for theorizing the basis and forward trajectory of ethnographic fieldwork, especially with regard to topics such as the study of sexuality and violence which have proved resistant to standard ethnographic strategies. The cultural meanings of sexual and violent representation, challenges to normative sexualities, and the emergence of digital subjectivities and ontologies are then examined in relation to this ethnographic approach. It is concluded that an anthropology still stuck in the problematic of the European Enlightenment must urgently consider the disappearance of its traditional "subjects" as meaningful ethnographic categories of research and work to contribute to the emergence of a post-human anthropology in which the post-Enlightenment "subject" is re-configured as a participant observer in research.