Anthropology As Storytelling: Fetishism and Terror in Michael Taussig's

Anthropology as storytelling: fetishism and terror in Michael Taussig’s early works

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D'Angelo, L. (2016) Anthropology as storytelling: fetishism and terror in Michael Taussig’s early works. Polis. Revista de Stiinte Politice, 4 (14). pp. 77-89. ISSN 2344-5750 Available at http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/84322/

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Reading’s research outputs online The contribution of Critical Theory in understanding society

Volum IV, Nr. 4 (14), Serie nouă, septembrie-noiembrie 2016

1 The contribution of Critical Theory in understanding society

SUMAR

EDITORIAL 5 The contribution of Critical Theory in understanding society Federico SOLLAZZO

ENGLISH SECTION 11 Towards an epistemology of social noise Silvio Ricardo Gomes CARNEIRO

The Marcusean inheritance as a possibility not yet realized: 25 from a pre-to a post-technological culture and society Federico SOLLAZZO

Technology and nature: a defence and critique of Marcuse 49 Michael KIDD

Critical Theory in Adorno and Marcuse 67 Ruggero D’ALESSANDRO

Anthropology as storytelling: fetishism and terror in Michael 77 Taussig’s early works Lorenzo D’ANGELO

Throw the bathwater out but save the baby: new perspectives 91 in Critical Theory Giacomo PEZZANO

ITALIAN SECTION 111 Sollevarsi dallo stagno afferrandosi per il codino. L’attualità della metacritica di Theodor W. Adorno Luca BALDASSARRE

La societá del paradosso e il paradosso della societá: una 125 riflessione Adorniana Valeria FERRARETTO

Trasformazione della teoria critica e questioni politiche: un 139 confronto tra Jürgen Habermas e Jacques Derrida Francesco GIACOMANTONIO

L’antropotecnica e le sue declinazioni in Sloterdijk 151 Maria Teresa PANSERA

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Corpi differenti. Per la ripresa di un approccio teorico-critico 165 Ubaldo FADINI

175 VARIA De la emanciparea muncii la protecţia socială: politica reprezentării profesionale în România la începutul secolului XX Victor RIZESCU

Parteneriatul estic: începutul refluxului procesului de extindere 185 a Uniunii Europene? Gheorghe CIASCAI

The ambivalent relationship between war and peace: public 195 speeches concerning the issue of terrorism Anna Rita CALABRÒ

RECENZII 219 The Romanian Public Opinion’s Evaluation of Italian Fascism (1922-1943) Sabin DRĂGULIN

Holy Russia - A Last Consequence of the Byzantine Political 225 Theology? Two Dimensions of Secularization Nicolae DRĂGUŞIN Human rights. The origins and perspectives of a contemporary 235 ideology Emanuel COPILAŞ

Notes of the contributors 235

Instrucţiuni pentru autori 241 Instructions to authors 244

4 Anthropology as storytelling

Anthropology as storytelling: fetishism and terror in Michael Taussig’s early works

Lorenzo D’ANGELO

Abstract: Among anthropologists inspired by Walter Benjamin and the early Frankfurt School, Michael Taussig is notable. For Taussig, Benjamin is like a muse, a source of inspiration to ponder over his extended fieldwork in South America. This article outlines a possible reading path through Taussig’searly works, a path specifically influenced by Benjamin’s insights into topics such as fetishism, violence, and storytelling. In particular, it examines the way Taussig approaches two issues: the Marxian question of commodity fetishism, and the question of writing against terror. The analysis of commodity and State fetishism leads Taussig to reject the symptomatic reading offered by thinkers such as Marx and Freud. The issue of violence or terror drives him to reflect on the politics of representation. In line with Benjamin’s reflections on the role of the storyteller in bourgeois society, Taussig intertwines these two lines of thought and interprets anthropology as a form of storytelling. This article highlights some of the epistemological and ontological assumptions behind this provocative idea. It argues that despite the radical nature of its premises, Taussig defends a weak conception of criticism.

Keywords: Postmodern Anthropology, Walter Benjamin, Storytelling, Violence, Fetishism, Truth.

Introduction ments of capitalist society. Further, their insights often translate in an In Anthropology as Cultural essayistic style that has become a Critique (1986), George Marcus and source of inspiration for many post- Michael Fischer emphasise the in- modern anthropologists, undermi- fluence of the early Frankfurt School ning the most established academic on cultural anthropologists’ attempts writing style and rethinking the links to elaborate critical analysis. In this between poetics and politics.1 light, the main merit of thinkers such Among anthropologists inspired as Adorno, Horkheimer and Benjamin by Walter Benjamin and the early is that they offer a demystifying per- Frankfurt School, Michael Taussig spective that challenges the funda- stands out. For this anthropologist,

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Benjamin is like a muse, a source of Getting with the fetish inspiration that has guided him throughout his extended fieldwork In order to frame the theoretical in South America. The ability to path developed by Taussig on the convey these experiences in written issue of fetishism, it is useful to form is one of Taussig’s central begin with his first book, The Devil concerns, bordering on obsession. and Commodity Fetishism in South His writing experiments subscribe to America (1980). In some respects the idea that ethnographers should this is the most conventional work abandon all pretence of innocence published during his long and and consider their texts as forms of prolific career. Yet, in 1980 its fictions rather than representations publication was a pioneering attempt of allegedly objective realities. Re- to combine the political-economic interpreting one of Benjamin’s most approach based on Marx’s works influential essays for postmodern with the symbolic-interpretative per- anthropologists – The Storyteller spective that had been in vogue in (1936) – Taussig considers anthropo- American anthropology since the logy to be a form of storytelling that 1970s.2 critically analyses the consolidated One of the primary goals of this certainties of everyday life and the book is to show how all societies institutions and founding myths that tend to present the categories of sustain every society. space, time, causation and human This short essay aims to outline a relations as “natural things”, and not possible reading path through the as historical and social products. In complex, fragmented and elusive this perspective, the task of a critical mixture of reflections and themes anthropological analysis is to show that Taussig tackled primarily in the the “social” that produces the “natu- 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. ral” in order to «liberate ourselves It is in this period that this anthro- from the fetish and phantom objec- pologist develop his own critical tivity with which society obscure anthropological perspective. The itself.»3 To this end, Taussig makes essay focuses on two recurring issues the long journey that anthropologists in Taussig’s works: the Marxian often make, visiting distant lands in question of commodity fetishism, order to find the needed distance to and the question of (writing against) de-familiarise the familiar.4 Thus, he violence or terror. Following this examines two different Latin path, this essay highlights some of American contexts: on one hand, the the epistemological and ontological Colombian sugar cane plantations, assumptions that drive Taussig to where in the early 1970s, descen- consider anthropology as a form of dants of African slaves worked on storytelling. contract, and on the other hand, the Bolivian tin mines studied by June

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Nash at approximately the same labour power like any other commo- period.5 These two cases share some dity. Because rural life is dominated, similarities. For example, both plan- instead, by the logic of reciprocity tation workers and tin miners were and gifts, these plantation and tin paid according to their production. mine workers face one of the funda- However, what makes this com- mental contradictions of capital: that parison worthy of interest is the fact which exists between use value and that both categories of workers exchange value. In this light, the entered into pacts with the devil to image of the devil cannot be consi- be more productive and increase dered to be an anachronistic relic of their earnings without any added the past, tied to a superstitious men- effort. In the case of the plantations, tality, but rather as an oblique form pacts were secret, and the money of critique directed at exploitative earned in this way was supposedly forms of capitalism and its inherent never productive: it ended up being contradictions. In other words, these squandered on luxuries or invested in South Americans workers show – unsuccessful assets. Similarly, land using the metaphorical language of where peasants established pacts with religion – the “unnaturalness” of the the devil became infertile. Thus, by practices that our commodified referring to pacts with the devil, society accept as “natural”, to the peasant communities explained the point where they are taken for success, as well as the fall from grace granted. In this sense, commodity of some individuals. In the case of tin fetishism as discussed by Marx in miners, the figure of the devil appea- Book I of The Capital finds “literal red in a ritualised context in which expression”, so to speak, in the ima- workers not only ask to become gination of these workers.8 richer, but also to be protected from It is against the background of the dangers that frequently occurred this analysis that, in a dense and underground. It is worth noting that complex essay titled Maleficium: in the latter case, the devil was often State Fetishism (1993), Taussig represented in the guise of an resumes his analysis of the Marxian American gringo, complete with a notion of commodity fetishism to brimmed hat and cigar.6 examine the question of the cultural Beyond the details of Taussig’s formation of the modern State.9 In analysis, the central hypothesis of Maleficium, the underlying theore- this book is that the devil «is a tical ambition is to place critical stunningly apt symbol of the aliena- thinkers as Adorno and Benjamin tion experienced by peasants as they into dialogue with radical and pro- enter the ranks of the proletariat»,7 vocative intellectuals such as Jean the social class that, as defined by Genet and George Bataille. The star- Marx, is dispossessed of the means ting point of this essay on fetishism of production and is forced to sell its is represented by the opposing

79 POLIS attitudes that the State takes in re- mask for practical politics and not gards to its subjects: on the one hand, the underlying reality of these same sacred and almost erotic attraction – practices.13 here, the attempt to unify the In tune with Abrams, Taussig Marxist and Freudian perspectives recognises the impalpability and on fetishism is evident, something “fictionality” of the State, the actual Benjamin had already tried to do – political power that it has, for and, on the other hand, repulsion example, to arm itself, to deport or and disgust. imprison real people, or convince Taussig is fully aware of not others to kill and to be ready to die being the first anthropologist to have for it as heroes – in short, to act as highlighted the fetishistic side of the an instrument of domination as modern State. The British anthro- silent and obvious as it is effective. pologist Radcliffe-Brown, father of Unlike Abrams, however, Taussig structural-functionalism, had already does not share the “epistemology of addressed the question of the State appearance” – or, to put it another in terms of a philosophical fiction.10 way, the depth-metaphysics14 – He had observed that at the theore- implicit in the metaphor of the State tical level the State is represented as as a mask. This metaphor assumes an entity above and beyond indivi- that behind the veil of appearance duals – such as to appear to have its hides a secret, deeper truth. Contrary own will. From Radcliffe-Brown’s to this, for Taussig, the State is «a point of view, however, “being real” meticulously shielded emptiness and is limited to the power of action of magnificent deceit in whose making the individuals and social structures all members of the society (…) of which they are a part. As a result, conspire».15 Obviously, the various power can only act through real members of a society conspire to individuals such as “kings, judges constitute the State in different and policemen” and not through the ways. It is primarily the collective State – which is a fiction. fantasies of the excluded, of those The idea that the State is a fiction who are at the margins of the State, has also been proposed by the or those who have not been initiated sociologist Philip Abrams, but in into this “empty secret”, giving it less radical terms.11 For Abrams, sacredness and power, defining the too, the State cannot be treated as a specific shape to the “S” in “State”: thing and therefore it cannot be a «not the basic truths, not the Being «material object» of study.12 This or the ideologies of the center»16. does not mean, however, that one The question then is how to should not take seriously the idea of channel the power of the fantasies, the State as a social and ideological produced at the margins and directed project that legitimises the illegi- to an imagined centre, in critical and timate. In this view, the State is a revolutionary practices. In this

80 Anthropology as storytelling regard, Taussig takes some of the A possible defetishising strategy suggestions offered in Benjamin’s is put forward more clearly in essay on surrealism (1929).17 In another work: The Magic of the Surrealism, Benjamin credits the State (1997) – a work that Taussig surrealists with having shaken the himself has declared as «the most bourgeoisie consciousness by poin- “fictional” of my writings».23 Here, ting out the mythical character of the fieldwork is located in an modernity. At the same time, he unspecified “European Elsewhere”. accuses them of being prisoners of As it is described, this place bears its phantasmagorias – hence, the resemblance to a region of South need for the surrealists to shock America which roughly corresponds themselves and wake up from their to Venezuela. In this essay-fiction, dreaming. Similarly, Taussig invites the anthropologist changes the theorists of commodity fetishism not names of places and people, inven- to resist or to admonish it. If ting characters not only to protect anything, the question is to how the confidentiality of his interlo- recognise it and, possibly, to submit cutors, but also to produce in the to it. Hence, the exhortation: «Get reader an estrangement effect that with it! Get in touch with the evokes the rhetorical strategies fetish!».18 It is worth stressing once adopted by Bertolt Brecht in his again that the underlying assumption works. Once again, the goal is to of this exhortation is that there is not show the fetishist or fictional a mechanical way out of the character of the nation-state. The fetishism; there is not a hidden truth idea pursued here is that in order to to be brought to the surface which deal with these types of «terribly neutralises the fetish. Nevertheless, real» fictions24 – to highlight, in as the author of Maleficium recog- other words, their arbitrary nature nises, critical thinking has the task and, at the same time, their ability to of « defetishising»,19 or to use James produce material effects – it is Martel’s expression, of being «anti- necessary to be on the same level as fetishistic».20 What Taussig suggests the fictions of the dominants, is to overthrow the power of turning their own strategies of reifi- fetishism against the power itself, cation and sacralisation of the being aware of the fact that: «the constituted dis-order against them. fetish absorbs into itself that which it represents, leaving no traces of the Culture of terror and healing represented»21. However, beyond exhortations, Taussig’s proposal is In Taussig, the notion of feti- not particularly clear or convincing. shism is closely intertwined with Martin Jay, for instance, sees it as a those of violence or terror. In an vacuous apotropaism that would interview with John Cline, the have left Adorno perplexed.22 anthropologist acknowledges that he

81 POLIS became interested in this specific exploring the «subterranean history» subject in the mid-1980s while that runs beneath the known history working on the draft of his second of Europe,26 in the same way, book, Shamanism, Colonialism, and Shamanism, Colonialism and the the Wild Man (1987). This book Wild West is largely an underground brings to mind Horkheimer and colonial history of the Amazon Adorno’s philosophical masterpiece region of Putumayo. Taussig’s atten- Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), tion is captured by this particular written during the Second World South American region because the War when they were both in exile in descendants of blacks slaves living the United States. Against the in the Valley of Cauca in Colombia backdrop of the European expe- often refer to the shamans of rience of the horrors of Nazism and Putumayo as the most powerful Fascism, a crucial question guides healers. Thus, Taussig embarks on a the analysis of the two philosophers: long journey which brings him into how is it possible that a society that has achieved such an extraordinary Amazon rainforest, a journey that degree of production power «instead becomes also an initiation into the of entering a truly human state, is local healing systems and the ritual sinking into a new kind of barba- use of yagé, the hallucinogenic rism»?25 The two scholars highlight beverage used by shamans to the limits of Marxism’s critique of stimulate visions. capitalist society. Indeed, it appears A central thesis of Taussig’s inadequate when it come to their book is that in the repertoire of the question, and does not give a clear shamanic imaginary and visions explanation as to why Marx and native to the region, traces of a Engels’s prophesied revolution has colonial holocaust emerge. From an not yet taken place. One of the core historical point of view, this Holo- theses of Dialectic of Enlightenment caust is well-documented. In 1907, is that the logic of domination tran- Walter Hardenburg was among the scends the pure logic of the first to document the violence in economy; in fact, the first precedes Putumayo against local population, and survives beyond the latter, and particularly, the Huitotos. Hardenburg therefore cannot be secondary. For was an American engineer who Horkheimer and Adorno, analysing spent a period of time imprisoned by this logic means exploring the con- men employed by Julio César tradictions inherent in the Enligh- Arana’s rubber company. He told of tenment’s idea of Reason and exa- what he saw during his impri- mining the very idea of “progress”, sonment in a series of journalistic beginning with its own mythical and accounts. Hardenburg was able to magical aspects, its “irrational ratio- witness first-hand the senseless nalism.” violence in Putumayo: tortures, As the authors of Dialectic rapes and gratuitous killings. Enlightenment are interested in

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When Hardenburg’s words almost exterminating the local popu- reached the British public, they lation? Rationalising the logic created such an outcry that the behind these atrocities means con- British Government decided to send cealing the underlying reasons that one of its representative on the site. have turned violence from a means The task was entrusted to Sir Roger to an end in itself. In Putumayo, the Casement, who had already carried men of the company reached such a out a similar survey in the Belgian level of brutality and destructiveness Congo in the early twentieth that the very possibility for the century, denouncing the barbarity of reproduction of the indigenous the European colonisers. The result workforce was jeopardised. Case- of Casement’s prolonged explorat- ment’s analysis does not explain ion of the Amazon forest (1910- why the company, acting for profit, 1911) was a report that confirmed in fact, created the conditions for the what until then had seemed, for the destruction of its essential source of most part, to be rumours: mutilated profits: the indigenous labour force. and tortured bodies; executions and Taussig suggests engaging, rather systematic abuses against young and than simply penetrating, the veil of old members of indigenous the logic of profit in order to turn the communities. hallucinatory quality of violence As Taussig notes, Casement’s against itself.27 Taking into account report offered a rigid political- the fantasies and the imaginary of economic reading of these events. the oppressors, the author of According to the British government Shamanism, Colonialism, and the representative, the rubber company Wild Man, argues that the “culture had to face a problem of an econo- of terror” created by the men of the mic nature: how to make profits company acted not only on their with a limited number of labourers primary victims, the Huitotos, but and low-quality rubber. In this light, also on the oppressors themselves. the use of violence was instrumental In this regard, Taussig uses the in subjugating the indigenous labour expressions «epistemic murk» and and increasing productivity. For «epistemic confusion» to describe Taussig, this analysis is unsatis- what lies between what is true and factory because it does not explain what is false, between the real and the unprecedented level of violence the fictitious. Analysing the existing reached in Putumayo. Indeed, historical documents, it emerges that Casement attributes an “illusory the men of the company were rationality” to the market that makes obsessed with death, and therefore sense of what, in reality, escapes to they lived in fear. Surprisingly, they any effort of rationalisation. To what were terrified by the Huitotos. They end did the company massacre thought that their victims were defenceless people to the point of primitive and violent “savages”,

83 POLIS capable of abhorrent practices such be symbolic attempts to restore psy- as cannibalism. As stated by Romulo chic order and social unity. For the Parades, a Peruvian judge in charge author of Shamanism, Colonialism, of investigating the facts regarding and the Wild Man, contemporary Putumayo: shamanic practices are efforts to Their imagination [of the station simultaneously create and undo managers where the rub was extrac- (with the sufferers) what he defines ted] was diseased [...] and they saw as the «space of death». Parado- everywhere attacks by Indians, xically, it is from this space «where conspiracies, uprisings, treachery the social imagination has populated etc. and in order to save themselves its metamorphizing images of from these fancied perils [...] they evil»,30 filled with anguished images killed, and killed without com- and stories of terror, that shamans passion.28 derive their healing power. This According to Taussig, this diseased space is fraught with contradictions imagination was partially triggered that open up the possibility of by the corps of indigenous guards transmuting the death in life, the evil employed by the company, the so in salvation. Thus, the magic power called “muchachos” of Barbadian of today’s shamanic healing rituals origins, whose purpose was to includes the memory, full of hope of enforce the orders of the managers salvation, of the “wild” men of the and to punish transgressors. These Putumayo. It is worth emphasising guards played an important sym- that these sad figures and images are bolic role in feeding oppressors’ the result of complex process of co- fears by confirming the truthfulness creation in which the colonisers, of the rumours about Huitotos, and missionaries, and local population in so doing, objectifying their para- each played a part. In not entirely noiac fantasies. Thus, these “savage predictable ways, Huitotos have now Indians” of the Putumayo acted as a become what Benjamin would sort of “colonial mirror” onto which consider “dialectical images”, that the men of the company projected is, «picture puzzles which shock by their own barbarism. In the world of way of their enigmatic form and fear that they themselves had thereby set thinking in motion».31 As created, the only way to survive was images of the space of death, to imitate the terror seen through Huitotos are capable of simulta- this mirror. To use Taussig’s words: neously representing and transfor- «the terror and tortures they devised ming misfortune in the power of mirrored the horror of the savagery healing, the evil in the good. Signi- they both feared and fictionalized.29 ficantly, Taussig explicitly refers to Unsurprisingly, Taussig rejects the dream-world of popular imagi- those sociological theses that inter- nation evoked by Benjamin. It is in pret shamanic healing rituals only to this reality of images and myths that

84 Anthropology as storytelling the battle for preparing a truly also Adorno and Benjamin to a revolutionary act is played. This certain degree. The issue of violence reminds us that for Benjamin, too, in or terror drives Taussig to reflect on opposition to orthodox Marxism, the politics of representation, and on myth and fantasy were battlefields how to deal with these phenomena that could not be left to reactionaries without reproducing them in the or fascists.32 very act of writing, because «violence is such a phenomenon that wri- Some thoughts at the margins ting about it can make it worse».34 These two lines of thought con- Taussig considers anthropology verge on the idea that the anthro- to be a way of telling stories, a form pologist’s task is not to discover of critical analysis that is aware of allegedly hidden truths, or to explain the role of language and consider the “facts”. For Taussig, the truth is author to be a producer of realities. always a mediated truth.35 Further, In line with Benjamin’s reflections he is not specifically interested on the role of the storyteller in whether something called “truth” bourgeois society, Taussig argues corresponds with the real. In that most anthropologists tend to Shamanism, Colonialism, and the reduce their stories to information Wild Man he states unequivocally explaining the unknown with the that «my subject is not the truth of known and the strange with the being but the social being of truth, familiar. In other words, from his not whether facts are real but what point of view, they are unable to the politics of their interpretation face the fear of what is elusive and and representation are».36 Recently, rationally untameable. On the Taussig has provocatively compared contrary, postmodern anthropo- his works to fairy tales and has logists have the merit of recognising claimed that he is first a writer and this fear and experimenting with then an anthropologist.37 The result narrative strategies «to leaving is that Taussig has continued to weirdness weird».33 write books that are stimulating from In the texts examined in this a literary point of view. Readers are short essay, some epistemological fascinated by the narrative style and and ontological assumptions emerge the erudite thoughts contained in his supporting this view. The analysis of stories, but they are often unsa- commodity and State fetishism leads tisfied, sometimes even becoming Taussig to reject the symptomatic “irritated” when they seek explana- reading offered by Marx and Freud. tory interpretations.38 Often, readers In this respect, his position is closer have to assemble heterogeneous and to those thinkers that for the most allusive fragments by themselves. part share an aversion to the These materials, as they are pre- “depth”, particularly, Nietzsche, but sented, do not always offer enough

85 POLIS information to dissect the contexts than others».41 In a certain way, and gaining an understanding of the those most vulnerable to structural perspective of the social actors in violence themselves demand unequi- question. vocal positions. Looking for some- At times, it seems that Benjamin thing that may be called “truth of is taken too literally, or out of the facts” does not necessarily mean context, particularly when the being naively positivist, as some Berliner thinker states that narrating postmodernists affirm in a somehow consists largely of keeping «a story hasty and confused way.42 Rather, it free from explanation as one repro- means seeking a more solid foun- duces it» so that the reader is free dation for strong critical thinking «to interpret things the way he that is capable of combining under- understands them».39 The problem, standing with compassion and however, is that “things” do not solidarity with the most vulne- always speak for themselves.40 In rable.43 On the contrary, despite the addition, not all interpretations can radical nature of its premises, be considered on the same level. Taussig defends a weak conception In relation to this, the medical of criticism that inevitably has weak anthropologist Paul Farmer – who effects. In this view, storytelling is has worked as a physician in some only likely to become a rhetorical art of the poorest regions of the world of challenging the dominant in direct contact with those who discourses – but the effectiveness directly experience the effects of remains to be seen. Rather, the issue poverty, endemic diseases and is to establish ethical relationships global social injustice – reminds us with others differently positioned44 that «some versions [of truth] must and at the same time, to radically have more points of contact with question the world in order to external reality and actual events change it.45

Note

1 See: G.E. Marcus and M.M.J. Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1980, p. Fischer (eds.), Anthropology as 5. Cultural Critique: An Experimental 4 See: C. Kluckhohn, Mirror for man, Moment in the Human Sciences, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1949. University of Chicago, Chicago, 5 On this subject Nash published in 1986. the 1970s, but his monograph on 2 See: ibid., it. trans., p. 165. Bolivian miners, We Eat the Mines 3 M. Taussig, The Devil and and the Mines Eat Us (Columbia Commodity Fetishism in South University Press, New York), was America, University of North published only in 1993. Taussig re- elaborates some of Nash’s

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ethnographic material in the third Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New part of his book after taking into York, 1978. account the plantation workers of the 18 M. Taussig, Maleficium, cit., p. 229. Cauca Valley. 19 Ibid., p. 241. 6 The similarity with senior executives 20 J. Martel, “Anti-fetishism: Notes on of mining companies does not go the thought of Walter Benjamin”, in unnoticed. «Critical Legal Thinking», 7 M. Taussig, The Devil and 22/03/2013, Commodity Fetishism in South http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013 America, cit., p. xi. /04/22/anti-fetishism-notes-on-the- 8 See: A. Appadurai, The Social Life thought-of-walter-benjamin/, of Things: Commodities in Cultural accessed on 22 October 2016. Perspective, Cambridge University 21 M. Taussig, Maleficium, cit., p. 246. Press, Cambridge, 1986, p. 54. 22 M. Jay, “Unsympathetic magic”, in 9 See: M. Taussig, Maleficium: State «Visual Anthropology Review», n. Fetishism, in E. Apter and William 2, vol. 9, 1993, p. 81. Pietz (eds.), Fetishism as Cultural 23 D. Levi-Strauss and Michael Discourse, Cornell University Press, Taussig, “The magic of the state: An Ithaca, NY and London, 1993, p. interview with Michael Taussig”, in 218.This essay is also collected in «Cabinet», n. 18, 2005, M. Taussig, The Nervous System http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/18 (Routledge, New York and London, /strauss.php, accessed on 24 October 1992, pp. 111-140). 2016. 10 See: A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Preface 24 Ibid. to African Political Systems, in M. 25 M. Horkheimer and Th.W. Adorno, Fortes and Edward Evans-Pritchard, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Stanford (eds.), African Political Systems, University Press, Stanford, 2002, p. Oxford University Press, New York, xiv. 1940, p. xxiii, cit. in Taussig’s 26 Ibid., p. 249. Maleficium. 27 M. Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism, 11 See: P. Abrams, “Notes on the and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror Difficulty of Studying the State”, in and Healing, University of Chicago «Journal of Historical Sociology», n. Press, Chicago and London, 1987, p. 1, vol. 1, 1988. 10. 12 Ibid., p. 75. 28 Ibid., p. 121. 13 Ibid., p. 58. 29 Ibid., p. 133. 14 See: N. Castree, “Commodity 30 Ibid., p. 5. fetishism, geographical imaginations 31 Ibid., p. 369. and imaginative geographies”, in 32 See: M. Taussig, “History as «Environment and Planning A», n. sorcery”, in «Representations», n. 7, 33, 2001. 1984, p. 89. 15 M. Taussig, Maleficium, cit., p. 240. 33 M. Taussig, “The Diary as Witness: 16 Ibid. An Anthropologist Writes What he 17 See: W. Benjamin, Surrealism: The Must”, in «The Chronicle Review», Last Snapshot of the European 19/12/2003, Intelligentsia, in Id. Reflections, http://www.chronicle.com/article/Th

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e-Diary-as-Witness-an/11035, 42 See: N. Polier and W. Roseberry, accessed on 15 October 2016. “Tristes Tropes”, cit. 34 J. Cline and M. Taussig, “I swear I 43 According to Paul Farmer, the saw this: John Cline interviews concept of truth is both the premise Michael Taussig”, in «Los Angeles of the possibility of knowing with Review of Books», 03/01/2013, compassion and solidarity, and https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/i- bearing witness to those forms of swear-i-read-this-john-cline- violence and misery that afflict the interviews-michael-taussig, accessed most the vulnerable. Farmer aims to on 27 October 2016. call into question the myths and 35 See: M. Taussig, “The Diary as propaganda of the oppressors (see: Witness”, in «The Chronicle Pathologies of Power, cit., pp. 269- Review», cit. 70). 36 M. Taussig, Shamanism, 44 E. Cameron,“New geographies of Colonialism, and the Wild Man, cit., story and storytelling”, in «Progress p. xiii. in Human Geography», n. 5, vol. 36, 37 See: J. Cline and M. Taussig, “I 2012, p. 583. swear I saw this”, in «Los Angeles 45 On the idea of “storytelling for Review of Books», cit. social change” it worth mentioning 38 See: S. Nugent, “Taussig Michael. geographer feminists such J.K. Shamanism, Colonialism and the Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Politics (University of Minnesota Healing”, in «Man», n. 2, vol. 32, Press, Minneapolis, 2008), and S. 1988, p. 402. Razack, “Story-Telling for Social 39 W. Benjamin, Illuminations, Schoken Change” (in «Gender and Books, New York, 1968, p. 89. Education», n. 1, vol. 5, 1993). R 40 See: N. Polier and W. Roseberry, Maggio offers a useful review on “Tristes Tropes: Post-Modern anthropology and storytelling in Anthropologists Encounter the Other “The Anthropology of Storytelling and Discover Themselves”, in and the Storytelling of «Economy and Society», n. 2, vol. Anthropology” (in «Journal of 18, p. 251. Comparative Research in 41 P. Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Anthropology and Sociology», n. 2, Health, Human Rights, and the New vol. 5, 2014). War on the Poor, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 2005, p. 69.

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