Apprehending Anyone: the non-indexical, post-cultural, and cosmopolitan human actor

This article argues that the individual, as an actor with an identity over and above his or her membership in social groupings and cultural traditions, exists universally as an ontological reality. The recognition of this figure in anthropology is both an empirical and a moral necessity. The article gives the moniker ‘Anyone’ to the transcendent individual figure. The course of the article, after the introduction of Anyone, is to survey the critiques that have appeared in social commentary of such a figure, critiques of cultural, institutional, realpolitische, and phenomenological kinds. The article offers arguments against these critiques so as to invest Anyone with an ontological and a moral existence that is anthropologically persuasive and accords to the ethnographic record. Anyone is the individual within the role-player, the actor who has the capacity to ‘pass’ as member of any social grouping, any cultural tradition. There is an anthropological duty to conceive of ways in which Anyone can pass into social analysis and statecraft alike.