On the Geopragmatics of Anthropological Identification (Loose Can(n)ons Book 4)

__On the Geopragmatics of Anthropological Identification__ explores the discursive spaces of our speaking position, or what has routinely been referred to in the literature as the poetics and politics of writing culture. At issue here are its problematic underlying notions of cultural identity, authorial subjectivity and postcolonial critique. Contrary to the widespread assumption that cultural studies and the social sciences share a common discourse of culture and society, Allen Chun argues that 'modern' disciplinary practices and axioms have in fact produced inherently incompatible theories. Anthropology's ethical relativism has also created obstacles for a critical theory of culture and society. We live in a transnational, multicultural world that has misunderstood many central aspects of cultural identity, from which anthropology cannot be exempt. On the Geopragmatics of Anthropological Identification is literally about the discursive spaces of our use of language and their underlying practices. Contrary to the widespread belief that the social sciences and cultural studies share a common discourse of culture and society, Allen Chun argues that 'disciplines' of thought have created their own 'schools' which have led to misleading assumptions. Anthropology's inability to transcend its own ethical relativism and to form new cultural theories is critiqued as Chun offers a dramatic new way forward in the discipline An audacious critique of the issues that have plagued culturalization in anthropological thought and writing. Allen Chun argues that disciplinary knowledge has always been embedded in changing contexts of sociopolitical practice and that neglect of its underlying politics gives different meaning to anthropology's objective fallacy.