An Anthropology of the Subject

An Anthropology of the Subject rounds out the theoretical-philosophical cosmos of one of the twentieth century's most intellectually adventurous anthropologists. Roy Wagner, having turned "culture" and "symbols" inside out (in The Invention of Culture and Symbols That Stand for Themselves, respectively), now does the same for the "subject" and subjectivity. In studying the human subject and the way human culture mirrors itself, Wagner has redefined holography as "the exact equivalence, or comprehensive identity, of part and whole in any human contingency."

Roy Wagner is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia. The classic The Invention of Culture (1975; 1981) is one of a half-dozen highly regarded works of ethnography and theory by Wagner.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
PREFACE 
ABSTRACT OF THE ARGUMENT 
INTRODUCTION 
I. THE HUMAN HOLOGRAM
1. To Be Caught in Indra's Net 
2. Where Is the Meaning in a Trope? 
3. A Sociality Reperceived 
4. Our Sense of Their Humor: Their Sense of Ours
II. THE TRAP OF !CONICITY
5. The Story of Eve
6. The Icon of Incest
7. The Queen's Daughter and the King's Son
8. The Consumer Consumed
III. THE ECHO-SUBJECT
9. Echolocation
10. Imaginary Spaces
11. The Cakra ofJohann Christian Bach
12. The Near-Life Experience
IV. CAKRA
13. Reinventing the Wheel
14. The Physical Education of the Wheel
15. Sex in a Mirror
16. The Single Shape of Metaphor in All Things
GLOSSARY OF UNFAMILIAR CONCEPTS
NOTES
INDEX