Preface -- Introduction : the illusion of anthropological identity -- Anthropological reifications from ethnicity to identity -- Toward identification : the unconscious geopolitics of ethnicity and culture in theory -- The diasporic mind-field in the (inter)disciplinary politics of identity -- Beyond the imagined community of writing culture -- The predicament of James Clifford in the anthropological imaginary -- Writing theory : rethinking the emancipation of the author from his function -- Can the postcolonial speak in sociological theory? -- Subaltern studies as historical exception / Postcolonialism as critical theory -- Nation as norm, state as exception : unseen ramifications of a hyphenated modernity.