Michael Taussig Book order

Exploring the act of writing, Michael Taussig emphasizes its significance in anthropological practice and the need to preserve experiential knowledge. His essays blend personal reflections from his childhood in Sydney with travels across various countries, highlighting themes of fabulation and provocation. Taussig champions a form of exploratory writing that captures the spontaneity of fieldnotes, drawing on influential thinkers like Bataille, Benjamin, Burroughs, and Nietzsche. This collection showcases his distinctive style, appealing to both longtime fans and new readers.

"Michael Taussig's works are known not only for their critical insights, but also for their bold and experimental style. In these essays, Taussig finds himself reflecting on the act of writing itself, revealing its importance for anthropological practice and calling for the discipline to keep experiential knowledge from extinguishing as fieldnotes become scholarship. Taussig calls for and exemplifies a form of exploratory writing that preserves the spontaneity and magic of notes scribbled down in haste. His reflections take us from his childhood in Sydney to trips to Afghanistan, Colombia, Finland, Italy, Turkey, and Syria. Along the way, Taussig also explores themes of fabulation and provocation that are central to his work, in addition to the thinkers dearest to him--Bataille, Benjamin, Burroughs, and Nietzsche, among others. This collection is vintage Taussig, bound to interest longtime readers and newcomers alike"--

A picture book to be shared and savored by both children and adults: a journey into a wondrous world colored by the stories we might choose to tell about it. A full moon after a wasp attack, poppies from a train, panning for gold in the River Cesecito, a bountiful pumpkin harvest . . . . Postcards for Mia is a joyful collection of hand-drawn and -painted postcards sent by anthropologist Michael Taussig to his granddaughter, Mia. From airports in New York to cemeteries in Colombia, confrontations with wild boars to conversations with well-dressed koalas, Postcards for Mia is a picture book to be shared and savored by both children and adults, a journey into a wondrous world colored by the stories we might choose to tell about it. Anthropologist Michael Taussig is renowned for his visionary explorations of color, magic, and myth, founded upon over forty years’ experience with communities in Colombia and Venezuela as well as research visits to Palestine, Kurdish Syria, Kabul, Alice Springs, Sydney, Venice, and Paris. This, his first fully illustrated picture book, provides a remarkably personal insight into Taussig’s unique way of seeing and responding to the world. Drawing observation and reverie into vibrant and humorous acts of vivid storytelling, this delightful scrapbook documents the warmth and excitement of an inter-generational exchange, inspired by the simple pleasure of recounting the excitement of one’s travels.

"Expand your aural and sensory experiences with Extreme Music. An exploration of tomorrow's sounds (and silences) today. Michael Tau had spent years obsessed by the extremes of musical expression. Extreme Music: Silence to Noise and Everything In Between is the culmination of decades of research into the sounds (and silences) that comprise the outer limits and conceptual expressions that stretch the definition of music. Tau defines and categorizes these recorded sounds into sections that allow fans and newcomers to explore the fascinating world of musicians who defy convention. He explores a wide range of extremes including volume, speed, and vulgarity to packaging, recording methods, unplayable media, outdated technologies, and digital pioneers. He asks and answers the questions: Are all sounds music? Is silence music? Is a plate of rotting food once cataloged, packaged and sold by a distributor qualify as music? Extreme Music includes over 100 interviews with makers and musicians as Tau uses his background in psychiatry to help readers understand what motivates people to create and listen to non-mainstream music. As a fan of multiple avant-garde musical genres, Tau uncovers the pleasures (and sometimes pain and frustration) found at the outré fringes of music. Extreme Music is the ideal guide for curious seekers, die-hard fans, and cultural investigators. Features images and curated links to samples of music"-- Publisher's description

Highlighting the journey of an emerging artist, this first monograph showcases a collection of their work. The book features a unique French fold jacket that opens to reveal a striking, poster-sized piece, emphasizing the artist's creative vision and talent. It serves as both a celebration of their achievements and an introduction to their artistic style, making it a significant addition to the art world.

For centuries, humans have excelled at mimicking nature in order to exploit it. Now, with the existential threat of global climate change on the horizon, the ever-provocative Michael Taussig asks what function a newly invigorated mimetic faculty might exert along with such change. Mastery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown is not solely a reflection on our condition but also a theoretical effort to reckon with the impulses that have fed our relentless ambition for dominance over nature.   Taussig seeks to move us away from the manipulation of nature and reorient us to different metaphors and sources of inspiration to develop a new ethical stance toward the world. His ultimate goal is to undo his readers’ sense of control and engender what he calls “mastery of non-mastery.” This unique book developed out of Taussig’s work with peasant agriculture and his artistic practice, which brings performance art together with aspects of ritual. Through immersive meditations on Walter Benjamin, D. H. Lawrence, Emerson, Bataille, and Proust, Taussig grapples with the possibility of collapse and with the responsibility we bear for it.

The exploration of mimesis and alterity delves into the intricate relationship between imitation and the dynamics of Self and Other, highlighting their ties to colonialism. Drawing on influential thinkers and ethnographic studies of the Cuna, the author illustrates the evolving instability of alterity. In a new preface, the author reflects on the lasting impact of the work since its original publication, offering a vigorous and unconventional analysis that enhances our comprehension of ethnography, racism, and societal structures.

In his usual incantatory style, Taussig takes on palm oil, one of the most perniciously exploitative commodities in our world today.

In the vein of his books "The""Nervous System "and "Walter Benjamin s "Grave, "The Corn Wolf "presents a collection of essays that capture well Michael Taussig s ongoing development/trajectory as a writer and his recent move toward storytelling "as" theory. The thrust, in a nutshell, is to extend and develop the contrast between the "Nervous System "style of writing, writing that arises from what Taussig calls the bodily unconscious, and what he now refers to as agribusiness writing, a type of writing that strips ethnography not only of its capacity to surprise but also to connect with another world. Taussig defends ethnography from agribusiness writing just as the corn wolf in Frazer s "Golden Bough" inspirits and defends agricultural crops from the reapers. A crucial aspect of this analogy is that the corn animal "occupies" the field protecting it from disease and disaster, in short from profanation. Taussig calls this apotropaic magic as opposed to the magic that transforms crops (read ethnography ) into mere food (read scholarly article or theory ). His essays explore the idea of occupation in a variety of contexts and meanings such as Palestine and Wall Street."

Features three essays that engage the extraordinary Occupy movement that has swept across the world, examining everything from self-immolations in the Middle East to the G8 crackdown in Chicago to the many protest signs still visible worldwide.