The Magic of the State - Paperback

by Michael Taussig (Author)

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.

Back Jacket

The Magic Of The State focuses on the theater of spirit possession at a Spirit Queen's enchanted mountain where the dead--Blacks and Indians, Europe's fetishized others--pass into the bodies of the living, creating a circulation of ecstatic bodily power. The Magic Of The State envisions power's violence, but also its adjection and attraction. This work is, in the surrealist tradition, a kind of defacement of power, and of the sacred underpinnings of modern sovereignty.

Author Biography

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.