Records visionary anthropologist Michael Taussig's reflections on the fieldwork notebooks he kept through forty years of travels in Colombia. This title exhibits Taussig's characteristic verve and intellectual audacity, that is combined with a revelatory sense of intimacy.
Looks at the interaction between civilized and primitive people in Colombia, examines the role of the shaman, and discusses healing practices in the jungle.
Taussig undertakes a history of the mimetic faculty. Using anthropological theory and the ideas of Benjamin, Adorno and Horckheimer the author analyses mimesis across time and cultures.
The Magic of the State focuses on the theatre of spirit possession at a Spirit Queen's enchanted mountain where the dead-Blacks and Indians-Europe's fetishized others-pass into the bodies of the living.