Publication

1997 - Routledge, New York, New York (State)

Language

English

Word Count

51,500 words, Guess

Page Count

206 pages

Identifiers

and 3 more
  • Library of Congress Control Number96013469
  • Goodreads887864
  • LibraryThing7257596

Classifications

  • DDC320.98
  • LCCJL1866 .T38 1997

Description

Enter an ethnographically surreal work located in a fictive Latin American country: 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. Employing Bataille's concept of the sacred, Taussig draws on his extensive fieldwork to create his own theater of spirit possession. He then traces the circulation of power, along with its dada-like transformations between spirit and matter, everywhere - through popular shrines, official monuments and slogans, money, the police, automobiles, taxis, the freeway system, and the stealing of the sword of state.

Subjects

Topics

Places

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