The Nervous SystemIn a series of intriguing essays ranging over terror, State fetishism, shamanic healing in Latin America, homesickness, and the place of the tactile eye in both magic and modernity, anthropologist Michael Taussig puts into representational practice a curious type of engaged writing. Based on a paranoiac vision of social control and its understanding as in a permanent state of emergency leaving no room for contemplation between signs and things, these essays hover between story-telling and high theory and thus create strange new modes of critical discourse. The Nervous System will appeal to writers, scholars, artists, film makers, and readers interested in critical theory, aesthetics, and politics. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 11 | |
The Legacy of Conquest | 37 |
4 An Australian Hero | 53 |
An Unnatural History | 79 |
6 Reification and the Consciousness of the Patient | 83 |
State Fetishism | 111 |
8 Tactility and Distraction | 141 |
9 Homesickness Dada | 149 |
Notes | 183 |
| 195 | |
| 201 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Adorno analysis Anthropology ANZAC arbitrariness asked Australian Azande Ball becomes body Brecht called capitalist Churinga Claude Lévi-Strauss clinical College of Sociology Colombia colonial commodity create crucial culture Cuna curing dada dead death disappeared disease dreams Durkheim Elementary Forms Emile Durkheim Emmy Hennings epistemology essay everyday fact feel fetish film flight force Gallipoli Genêt healer healing Holden Holmer and Wassén Hugo Ball human Ibid impure sacred Indian Kogi language Lévi-Strauss Machu Picchu magical maleficium meaning mimesis mimetic modern moral Mother narrative nation nature Nervous System object organic patient penis political polymyositis practice professional Putumayo reality reification relationship representation ritual sense shaman sick signifier social society Sociology soldiers song sort soul spirit structure surely symbols tactility terror terror's talk thief thief's journal things toad totem understand University violence Walter Benjamin woman women words writes York