Bricklayers (Dialectic of Consciousness/ Hegel in Mexico p. 59)

"Nevertheless, what happened to them in the passage from one job to the other has an extraordinary meaning. The "world of men" placed them socially as "anthropological laborers," in a situation where they were "on the verge of realizing a true human form of labor, "on the verge of converting themselves into real human beings and not only because of the fact - which they will have commented upon with mocking joy - of having served for some days for this "crazy guy" who contracted them for a strange and incomprehensible activity, and paid them, to boot, with an unusual generosity. They were "on the verge," yes, but this "on the verge" stayed there, suspended, without resolving itself, like a fantasmatic emanation above the anthropological work that disappeared, in the same way that the vagrant flames of fuegos fatuos float over the graves of a cemetery. However, such being "on the verge" repeats itself and remains in the labor of bricklaying to which they returned, because in a certain sense and in a new but essential form, they continuet o be "anthropologists"on their job as house builders."