Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the SensesIn Mimesis and Alterity Taussig undertakes and eccentric history of the mimetic faculty. He moves easily from the nineteenth-century invention of mimetically capacious machines, such as the camera, backwards to the fable of colonial first contact' alleged mimetic prowess of primitives, ' and then forward to contemporary time, when the idea of alterity is increasingly unstable. Utilizing anthropological theory, Taussig blends Latin American ethnography and colonial history with the insights of Walter Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer. Vigorous and unorthodox, Taussig's understanding of mimesis in different cultures deepens our meaning of ethnography, racism and society. |
Contents
In Some Way or Another One Can Protect Oneself | 1 |
From Evil Spirits by Portraying Them | 12 |
Physiognomic Aspects of Visual Worlds | 19 |
Spacing Out | 33 |
The Magic of Mimesis | 44 |
The Organization of Mimesis | 59 |
With the Wind of World History in Our Sails | 70 |
Spirit of the Mime Spirit of the Gift | 88 |
Alterity | 129 |
The Color of Alterity | 144 |
The Search For the White Indian | 162 |
The Magic of Western Gear | 176 |
The Talking Machine | 193 |
His Masters Voice | 212 |
Reflection | 236 |
Sympathetic Magic In A PostColonial Age | 250 |
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Common terms and phrases
Adorno American animals Anthropology appearance baron become body Caillois Canal century chant chanter Chapin civilized cloth colonial commodity copy create culture Cuna Indians Cuna women curing figurines dance Darién Darwin Dialectic of Enlightenment dreams Emberá Erland Nordenskiold ethnography European fetish film Fitz Frazer's Fuegians genipa Gusinde Hauka healer Henry Wassén Horkheimer human Ibid imitation Jean Rouch Kuna labor Lionel Wafer machine Marcel Mauss Marsh Mauss means medicine mimesis mimesis and alterity mimetic faculty mimicking mimicry miming modern molas nature negro nele Nordenskiold and Pérez notion object optical unconscious Origin Histories painting Panama Panamanian phonograph primitive primitivism purpa reality reproduction ritual Rubén Pérez sailors San Blas savage Selk'nam sense sensuous sexual shaman Sherzer soul spirit strange sympathetic magic tactile Talking Dog things Tierra del Fuego tion trans Walter Benjamin Western white Indians woman womb wooden figurines writes York