1st Edition
The Magic of the State
Copyright Year 1997
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Book Description
Set in the enchanted mountain of a spirit-queen presiding over an unnamed, postcolonial country, this ethnographic work of ficto-criticism recreates in written form the shrines by which the dead--notably the fetishized forms of Europe's Others, Indians and Blacks--generate the magical powers of the modern state.
Author(s)
Biography
Michael Taussig teaches in the Anthropology Department at Columbia University. He is the author, most recently, of The Nervous System and Mimesis and Alterity, both published by Routledge.
Reviews
"Taussig offer[s] much of value for us to think about." -- Religious Studies Review
"The clear allusions to the South American local of Taussig's fieldwork and the spooky accompanying photographs and drawings give the whole an errie verisimilitude. He seems to be saying, "You think this is fantasy, but it is and is not." Taussig's style of truthtelling roams in the fantasists privileged territory." -- American Journal of Sociology