#michael taussig

[theknifegrowsdull]

Taussig, Michael (1997). Chapter. 10. Mucoid Ignominy. State making as Spirit Possession, The Magic of the State, Routledge, pp. 99-108

[accuratepicuresofanthropologists]

Next on anthroganger week we have Michael Taussig and Anthony Bourdain

The picture of Taussig is from his department web page

[quienesoliverterrones]

I think of Dionysus, half god, half man, half woman too, some thought, perceived as both man and animal, capable of great violence and of dance, drugged out, locked in the trance of divine madness, theater, impersonation, and mimesis —and no stranger to the rites and myths of the mysterious realm of death.

Michael Taussig, Beauty and the Beast, 2002.

[bustakay]

[triste-le-roy]

Cover to Michael Taussig’s Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man—featuring a photo of Putumayo natives with Eugenio Robuchon (artist/designer unknown, 1991).

(via Amazon)

[artgroupie]

As Walter Benjamin, following the Surrealists, might have elaborated on his insight into modern society as animated by new mythic powers located in the tactility of the commodity-image, the task is neither to resist nor admonish the fetish quality of modern culture, but rather to acknowledge, even submit to its fetish-powers, and attempt to channel them in revolutionary directions. Get with it! Get in touch with the fetish!

Michael Taussig, The Nervous System

[edwordsmyth]

Dipesh Chakrabarty

[swartzmark]

"Spirit possession can be a marvelous exploration and use of images, I think, in so far as it achieves Nietzsche’s mix of the Apollonian and Dionysian modes of engagement with the image. The possessed person moves into the image, which acquires a three-dimensional reality, so to speak, and does so by means of body-rhythms as with music and dance, what we might call the 'bodily unconscious.' Furthermore, spirit possession, like jazz music or interpretive literary criticism and social science, often allows for a free-wheeling improvisation of a role tailored to the specific problem of human relations that drives the person to either seek possession or seek guidance from someone possessed."

--Michael Taussig to David Levi Strauss in Cabinet (summer 2005)