Politics within Parentheses

Book excerpt: The book purports to mediate between various culturally determined profiles of the discipline of Communication Studies. While it directs the reader’s attention to landmark American texts in intercultural communication, it also signals the potential to make reading a relational praxis, thus writing a way out of the disciplinary meta-narratives of identification. Through its focus on studies which employ critical or (auto)ethnographic methods, the book represents a mediator of cultural meanings. Its unique approach resides in the offering of a personal incursion through the texts under scrutiny, which allows the reader a pathway, a practical orientation towards criticism in general, and the appropriate means to perform it.