ABSTRACT
By opting for analytical dissection rather than a dramatic narrative with ebbs, flows, counterpoints and constructed climaxes, many anthropologists end up alienating the people they should have reached. Arguably, the open-ended storytelling mode would have been appropriate for a discipline like anthropology in its current incarnation, where few final answers are offered and theoretical conclusions tend to be provisional. This chapter approaches the field of identity politics, since it is a subject area where anthropologists have a strong expertise, publish actively and ought to be able to reach a broad or even mass audience now and then. However, no matter what one's agenda, even a critical intervention is executed more efficiently through striking, provocative narratives than through an insistence on arcane terminology and in-house rules of argument.
