Against the suggestion that we are living in ‘post-political’ times, I argue that the capacity for critical politics is permanent and broadly distributed, as it emerges from the contradictions embedded in our everyday lives. Yet collective mobilisation to change prevailing power formations is not common. Ethnographers are well positioned to explain why this is so, by investigating critique at its incipient stage, when it may be mute or incoherent, and examining how it develops into a world-changing force or—more often—how the emergence of such a force is interrupted. Posing the trajectory towards historically effective politics as counter-factual (something we might expect to find), and attending to how such a trajectory is interrupted, offers a useful point of entry for ethnographic research. Drawing on the work of Antonio Gramsci and Stuart Hall, I propose a set of questions that could help guide a renewed anthropology of politics along these lines: (1) What is the formation of power that creates a sense of unease, or separation? (2) Through what practices is critique shared or enunciated? (3) What is the social group that connects to this critique? (4) In what ways does a group thus assembled act to change the configuration of power it has identified as problematic? Following the logic of the counterfactual: (5) What potential or embryonic critiques are not articulated, (6) do not form the basis for connection and mobilisation, or (7) do not make new worlds? Finally: (8) What are the formations, practices, and affective states that sustain and stabilise the status quo? In the second part of my essay I use these questions to probe practices of politics in three sites in rural Indonesia where I have carried out research.

中文翻译：

---

政治，中断

反对我们生活在“后政治”时代的建议，我认为，批判性政治的能力是永久性的，而且分布广泛，因为它源于我们日常生活中的矛盾。然而，集体动员起来改变普遍的权力形态并不普遍。民族志学家很容易解释这种情况的原因，方法是在初期阶段对批判可能是沉默的或不连贯的进行调查，然后研究它如何发展成改变世界的力量，或者（通常）如何发展这种力量。被打断了。将轨迹指向具有历史意义的有效政治是事实（我们可能会发现），并关注这种轨迹如何被打断，这为民族志研究提供了有用的切入点。借鉴Antonio Gramsci和Stuart Hall的工作，我提出了一系列问题，可以帮助遵循以下思路指导更新的政治人类学：（1）造成不安或分离感的权力形成是什么？（2）通过哪些实践来分享或阐明批评？（3）与这个评论有联系的社会群体是什么？（4）这样组成的一个团体以什么方式采取行动改变它已确定有问题的权力配置？遵循反事实的逻辑：（5）没有表达出任何潜在的批评或胚胎批评，（6）没有形成联系和动员的基础，或者（7）没有创造新世界？最后：（8）的构成，做法是什么，维持和稳定现状的情感状态？在本文的第二部分，我将使用这些问题来探讨我在印度尼西亚农村进行研究的三个地点的政治实践。