The Nervous System by Michael Taussig

by Michael Taussig

Based on anthropological fieldwork in Australia and Colombia, this collection of essays uses the workings of the human nervous system to illustrate concepts of culture.

Genres: Anthropology, Theory, Sociology, Nonfiction, Philosophy

Paperback

First published November 20, 1991

About the author

Michael Taussig (born 1940) earned a medical degree from the University of Sydney, received his PhD. in anthropology from the London School of Economics and is a professor at Columbia University and European Graduate School. Although he has published on medical anthropology, he is best known for his engagement with Marx's idea of commodity fetishism, especially in terms of the work of Walter Benjamin.

Reviews

[Roger Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of various essays by Taussig, reflecting his brilliance as a writer and a thinker. Thematic elements persist throughout amid deep readings of the big thinkers in sociology and anthropology.

[Aidan]

5/5 section on the nervous condition and Walter Benjamin

[FluffyNyctea]

Taussig’s discussion on tactility is something I refer back to quite a lot, often as a sophisticated enough straw man lolz. (I low-key clocked my supervisor as a Taussig fan.)

[Danny Cardoza · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very important text.... and a hilarious one. But such a pain to read. His prose takes wayyy too long to dissect. Even if it is witty, it sometimes seems like a voluble stream-of-consciousness... Leaving me torn. I liked it a lot, but I can't help but give it a "it was okay" because it was so hard to read...

[Peter N. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provoked a lot of thought. Taussig's writing moves like a camera lens zooming in and out, analysing lives and events, then their depiction in news media, then his own experiences with both, as well as the academic contexts that sustain his whole project. Ethnography is as much the subject of critique as the act of ethnographers writing ethnography - what magic, what mimetic correspondences, what shamanic flights does the ethnographer call into being by writing about magic and shamanism? Style and the craft of writing, then, is important for Taussig, and he writes in a style that befits a lifelong engagement with Walter Benjamin, marked by shock montage, caesuras, and endless blending between personal narrative, witty asides, rigorous theoretical treatment, ethnographic description and much else besides. His ideas as much as his way of setting them to paper offer numerous ways out of the Foucauldian conformism currently overpowering academia. That's why you should read this book.