What I prefer to emphasize here, then, is the complexities of consciousness even in the face of the most dominant cultural formations. This is not to say that actors can stand ‘outside of culture’, for of course they cannot. But it is to say that a fully cultural consciousness is at the same time always multi-layered and reflexive, and its complexity and reflexivity constitute the grounds for questioning and criticizing the world in which we find ourselves.

(Sherry B. Ortner "Subjectivity and Cultural Critique")