Palma Africana

by Michael Taussig

“It is the contemporary elixir from which all manner of being emerges, the metamorphic sublime, an alchemist’s dream.” So begins Palma Africana , the latest attempt by anthropologist Michael Taussig to make sense of the contemporary moment. But to what elixir does he refer?
 
Palm oil. Saturating everything from potato chips to nail polish, palm oil has made its way into half of the packaged goods in our supermarkets. By 2020, world production will be double what it was in 2000. In Colombia, palm oil plantations are covering over one-time cornucopias of animal, bird, and plant life. Over time, they threaten indigenous livelihoods and give rise to abusive labor conditions and major human rights violations. The list of entwined horrors—climatic, biological, social—is long. But Taussig takes no comfort in our usual “habitat loss,” “human rights abuses,” “climate change.” The shock of these words has passed; nowadays it is all a blur. Hence, Taussig’s keen attention to words and writing throughout this work. He takes cues from precursors’ Roland Barthes’s suggestion that trees form an alphabet in which the palm tree is the loveliest; William Burroughs’s retort to critics that for him words are alive like animals and don’t like to be kept in pages—cut them and the words are let free.
 
Steeped in a lifetime of philosophical and ethnographic exploration, Palma Africana undercuts the banality of the destruction taking place all around us and offers a penetrating vision of the global condition. Richly illustrated and written with experimental verve, this book is Taussig’s Tristes Tropiques for the twenty-first century. 

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2018

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

[Tuck Rodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve given it four stars only because this book, for me, is not as good as my cocaine museum, nor as devastating as what color is the sacred. I like the montage form and it fits considering Taussig’s admiration of the preeminent Marxist montage maker Benjamin and Taussig’s own desire to write reflexively, to make the writing fold back on itself in dazzling gymnastics. Too much goes on in this book for me to provide an holistic summary, but if you’re looking to better understand the ontological turn in anthropology— tho I think Taussig would hate this characterization— and the current impetus to expand agency to other life forms— though again Taussig rails against the term agency throughout, then maybe this book is for you? Good one to get lost in while indulging in a little day dreaming, an activity that the author espouses… if you’re bored of agribusiness writing then try this one on

[Phạm N. · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredibly composed!