Social research is caught up in a paradox. Building on the contributions of systemic theory and the complex thought of second order, the author proposes a reflection on the role of the social researcher who is faced with a subject of which he/she forms part. From such diverse angles as narrative, corporal expression, and plastic arts, a transgressor gaze is offered of the logics that inscribe social research. The aim is to make anthropology an exercise of agency-construction that allows creative readings of social reality, their dynamics of change and their possibilities of transformation.