Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative (Paperback)

~ Michael Taussig (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This volume [which asks what happens when something precious is despoiled] is vintage Taussig. . . . It has the hallmarks of his other works—originality, unusual associations among diverse sources, provocative and definitely contestable interpretations of classic theoretical texts, and a generally intimate, fascinated style of communicating with his readers.”—George Marcus, Rice University

Product Description

Defacement asks what happens when something precious is despoiled. It begins with the notion that such activity is attractive in its very repulsion, and that it creates something sacred even in the most secular of societies and circumstances. In specifying the human face as the ideal type for thinking through such violation, this book raises the issue of secrecy as the depth that seems to surface with the tearing of surface. This surfacing is made all the more subtle and ingenious, not to mention everyday, by the deliberately partial exposures involved in “the public secret”—defined as what is generally known but, for one reason or another, cannot easily be articulated.

Arguing that this sort of knowledge (“knowing what not to know”) is the most powerful form of social knowledge, Taussig works with ideas and motifs from Nietzsche, William Burroughs, Elias Canetti, Georges Bataille, and the ethnography of unmasking in so-called primitive societies in order to extend his earlier work on mimesis and transgression. Underlying his concern with defacement and the public secret is the search for a mode of truth telling that unmasks, but only to reenchant, thereby underlining Walter Benjamin’s notion that “truth is not a matter of exposure of the secret, but a revelation that does justice to it.”

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Product Details Paperback: 328 pages Publisher: Stanford University Press; 1 edition (September 20, 1999) Language: English ISBN-10: 0804732000 ISBN-13: 978-0804732000 Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies) Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #702,805 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover

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Citations (learn more)

27 books cite this book:

• The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life by Eviatar Zerubavel in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
• The Face on the Screen: Death, Recognition & Spectatorship (Film Studies Intellect) by Therese Davis in Front Matter, page 21, and Back Matter
• Carville: Remembering Leprosy in America by Marcia Gaudet in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
• Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics: Rethinking Religion through the Arts by S. Brent Plate in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
• Stitches on Time: Colonial Textures and Postcolonial Tangles by Saurabh Dube in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)

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	77% buy the item featured on this page: Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative 4.0 out of 5 stars (1) $27.95
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1 Review 5 star:    (0) 4 star:  (1) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)		Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews 12 of 17 people found the following review helpful: 4.0 out of 5 stars An idiosyncratic exploration of an essential topic, March 29, 2000 By  Henri Edward Dongieux (Decatur, GA, USA) - See all my reviews The anthropologist Michael Taussig provides a detailed and thoughful narrative on the cultural phenomena of public secrecy and Hegel's "labor of the negative," drawing inspiration from an impressive range of sources both new and old. This is a book on the theory and practice of unmasking, as a cultural practice that both contains and sustains the sacred in its ever-slippery transition back and forth between explicit cultural knowledge and public secrecy. In "unmasking unmasking" (to borrow a Taussigian metalogism) via a lively engagement with the ideas of both critical theorists (Nietsche, Benjamin, Canetti) and ethnologists, we learn that public secrecy can be the most crucial - if the most rarefied - form of social knowledge. In the book's last section, we recognize Uncle Mike as the little child in "The Emperor's New Clothes," who naively but urgently challenges us to see how that film of secrecy - behind which social life is all-too-often lived with perfect complicity - actually works its way into the making and unmaking of meaning.		Ad feedback   Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Stanford University Press; 1 edition (September 20, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804732000
• ISBN-13: 978-0804732000
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #702,805 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An idiosyncratic exploration of an essential topic, March 29, 2000

By	Henri Edward Dongieux (Decatur, GA, USA) - See all my reviews

The anthropologist Michael Taussig provides a detailed and thoughful narrative on the cultural phenomena of public secrecy and Hegel's "labor of the negative," drawing inspiration from an impressive range of sources both new and old. This is a book on the theory and practice of unmasking, as a cultural practice that both contains and sustains the sacred in its ever-slippery transition back and forth between explicit cultural knowledge and public secrecy. In "unmasking unmasking" (to borrow a Taussigian metalogism) via a lively engagement with the ideas of both critical theorists (Nietsche, Benjamin, Canetti) and ethnologists, we learn that public secrecy can be the most crucial - if the most rarefied - form of social knowledge. In the book's last section, we recognize Uncle Mike as the little child in "The Emperor's New Clothes," who naively but urgently challenges us to see how that film of secrecy - behind which social life is all-too-often lived with perfect complicity - actually works its way into the making and unmaking of meaning.