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.

"Roy Wagner is a one-of-a-kind anthropologist whose books provide intense intellectual stimulation. His way of connecting the world of New Guinea to the world of anthropology is unique and, well, mind-blowing.... He writes books that you actually want to and will read more than once." - Steven Feld, author of Sound and Sentiment "Wagner asks, daringly, what it would be like to imagine one of the most significant of human activities, the activity of description or representation, as a self-scaling phenomenon.... One begins to glimpse a genuine 'alternative anthropology." - Marilyn Strathern, author of The Gender of the Gift"

• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PREFACE ABSTRACT OF THE ARGUMENT INTRODUCTION I. THE HUMAN HOLOGRAM1. 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 OursII. THE TRAP OF !CONICITY5. The Story of Eve6. The Icon of Incest7. The Queen's Daughter and the King's Son8. The Consumer ConsumedIII. THE ECHO-SUBJECT9. Echolocation10. Imaginary Spaces11. The Cakra ofJohann Christian Bach12. The Near-Life ExperienceIV. CAKRA13. Reinventing the Wheel14. The Physical Education of the Wheel15. Sex in a Mirror16. The Single Shape of Metaphor in All ThingsGLOSSARY OF UNFAMILIAR CONCEPTSNOTESINDEX