The Magic of the State [Hardcover]

Michael Taussig (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 21, 1997 | ISBN-10: 0415917905 | ISBN-13: 978-0415917902 | Edition: 1

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

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, July, 1998

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (February 21, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415917905
• ISBN-13: 978-0415917902
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,452,126 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The modern state as voodoo ceremony, August 22, 1999

By 

Mark J. Knickelbine (Mt. Horeb, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Magic of the State (Paperback)

Taussig starts with an impressionistic analysis of a Latin American spirit possesion cult and then uses it as a model to explain how the modern state relies on various mysterious incarnations as the basis of its legal system, economics, official history, even its highways. Mixes ethnography, political theory and cultural criticism in an often unsettling but ultimately convincing performance. You WILL believe in ghosts!

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine example of Taussig's, August 4, 2002

By 

Henri Edward Dongieux - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Magic of the State (Paperback)

Taussig, as his career has progressed, has embraced more and more Nietzsche's dictum that cultural representation must - absolutely must - be inherently radical. The Magic of the State perhaps exemplifies this best - being of a different conceptual order than just about anything out there in large-press anthropology. However unorthodox Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man or Defacement may have been with their incorporation of the more literary voices in ethnography and cultural studies, The Magic of the State slips between orthodox and heterodox altogether - as it simply abandons anything resembling an enthographic model, and instead takes the form of a fictional narrative that might be called anthropological literature or, more accurately, surrealist anthropology...

If you can suspend your standard expectations of what state-theory should be all about, you will find Taussig's book extremely rewarding and even humorous in spots. If you remove the historical, traditional, and methodical bases of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, and inject a generous helping of hallucinatory imagery, dada-esque playfulness, and representational experimentation (and maybe some steriods), you MIGHT come within several kilometers of describing Taussig's masterful book. But in this case, to describe would be to "write around," and this is certainly a work that should be "written with" and celebrated for the vistas from which it enables us mere mortals to see.