Abstract You are reading the first sentence of this essay. In fact, outside of this abstract and a brief introduction, there are only first sentences in this essay, all collected from anthropology monographs and articles. Anthropology is a promiscuous discipline, but there are only about half a dozen ways to begin an anthropology essay. I collect sentences into their tropes, organize the sentences within those tropes, then arrange those tropes among one another, so this text reads like an opening to an anthropology essay, despite being composed entirely of openings to anthropology essays. I'd like to say I got the idea from Christian Marclay's film, The Clock , a memento mori whose 24‐hour narrative is driven by excerpts of movies that feature timepieces, but it probably came from a YouTube montage of Nicholas Cage screaming “Fuck” 40 times in 40 seconds. The expectations of academic realism as a genre transform this essay from archive to narrative: the text itself is theoretical, geographic, and historical nonsense, but it consolidates as an essay through the academic readers’ (your) efforts to suture discrepancies into cohesion. If this essay makes any sense, it's due to a magic trick realism performs on us. This might be worth thinking about whenever we read something that makes sense.

Lachlan Summers

American Anthropologist

American Anthropologist is the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association, reaching well over 12,000 readers with each issue. The journal advances the Association mission through publishing articles that add to, integrate, synthesize, and interpret anthropological knowledge; commentaries and essays on issues of importance to the discipline; and reviews of books, films, sound recordings and exhibits.

American Anthropologist is the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association, reaching over 12,000 readers with each issue. The journal furthers the Association's mission by publishing articles that contribute to, integrate, synthesize, and interpret anthropological knowledge; commentaries and essays on significant issues in the discipline; and reviews of books, films, sound recordings, and exhibitions.

《美国人类学家》（American Anthropologist）是美国人类学协会的旗舰期刊，每期吸引超过12,000名读者。该期刊通过发表文章来推动协会的使命，这些文章旨在增加、整合、综合和解释人类学知识；同时还包括对学科重要问题的评论和论文，以及对书籍、电影、音频录音和展览的评审。

Category	Quartile
社会学	1
社会学, 人类学	1

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