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Mastery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown
For centuries, humans have excelled at mimicking nature in order to exploit it. Now, with the existential threat of global climate change on the horizon, the ever-provocative Michael Taussig asks what function a newly invigorated mimetic faculty might exert along with such change. Mastery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown is not solely a reflection on our condition but also a theoretical effort to reckon with the impulses that have fed our relentless ambition for dominance over nature.
Taussig seeks to move us away from the manipulation of nature and reorient us to different metaphors and sources of inspiration to develop a new ethical stance toward the world. His ultimate goal is to undo his readers’ sense of control and engender what he calls “mastery of non-mastery.” This unique book developed out of Taussig’s work with peasant agriculture and his artistic practice, which brings performance art together with aspects of ritual. Through immersive meditations on Walter Benjamin, D. H. Lawrence, Emerson, Bataille, and Proust, Taussig grapples with the possibility of collapse and with the responsibility we bear for it.
Taussig seeks to move us away from the manipulation of nature and reorient us to different metaphors and sources of inspiration to develop a new ethical stance toward the world. His ultimate goal is to undo his readers’ sense of control and engender what he calls “mastery of non-mastery.” This unique book developed out of Taussig’s work with peasant agriculture and his artistic practice, which brings performance art together with aspects of ritual. Through immersive meditations on Walter Benjamin, D. H. Lawrence, Emerson, Bataille, and Proust, Taussig grapples with the possibility of collapse and with the responsibility we bear for it.
192 pages, Paperback
Published May 22, 2020
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About the author
Michael Taussig
54 books118 followersMichael 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.
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November 14, 2020chapter five
catastrophe: the solar inversion of satanic denial
chapter two
the exposition of the non-dogmatic cannot be dogmatic
chapter sixteen
art versus art
chapter fifteen
the alpha and omega of all mastery
well i guess one chapter might be unreadably readable
though chapter two will be the best part only for the title, not the text
---
the very first paragraph in the book
From the wheel to the atom bomb, from Mendel's peas to DNA, from shamans to Sergei Eisenstein's cream separator, we have excelled in mimicking nature so as to exploit it, just as we exploit each other and ourselves.
---
WHAT follows in the second paragraph?
If I am correct in assuming that global meltdown amplified mimetic and animistic impulses as never before, might mimetic excess provide us with a way out, providing a mutuality geared to the mastery of non-mastery, therewith giving the planet and ourselves a break?
---
paragraph four and five
My favorite example of mimesis is the human face, faced with another face as mask and window to the soul. How skilled are we at reading and responding facially, which here means acting, or should I say, feigning insensibly fast, subliminally mirroring reciprocities and anticipations.
But perhaps we should start with something simpler, like the mimesis between the wing of a bird and that of an airplane. Have you never wondered how a cross-section so cunning and simple can lift you off the ground? Now multiply this to infinity-lift off, I should say, start flying-for it is not our world, both artificial and natural, a treasure trove of analogies and similarities? Are not these analogies alive with the reciprocating tension of the gift that binds them and endows them with empathetic force?
But if the bird's wing is a gift to civilization, what does the bird get in return?
That is the question.
---
my lobster is losing brain cells
but i think i have a theory that half his fans are people who find a bullshit artist of the highest order, yet the tangled ideas and syntax just makes it William S. Burroughs cheese made from the Black Centipede, where it is so vile, yet so delicious that people eat it, and vomit, and eat it yet again, till they end up exhausted on the floor in a pool of vomit...
capitivated, trapped and repulsed
catastrophe: the solar inversion of satanic denial
chapter two
the exposition of the non-dogmatic cannot be dogmatic
chapter sixteen
art versus art
chapter fifteen
the alpha and omega of all mastery
well i guess one chapter might be unreadably readable
though chapter two will be the best part only for the title, not the text
---
the very first paragraph in the book
From the wheel to the atom bomb, from Mendel's peas to DNA, from shamans to Sergei Eisenstein's cream separator, we have excelled in mimicking nature so as to exploit it, just as we exploit each other and ourselves.
---
WHAT follows in the second paragraph?
If I am correct in assuming that global meltdown amplified mimetic and animistic impulses as never before, might mimetic excess provide us with a way out, providing a mutuality geared to the mastery of non-mastery, therewith giving the planet and ourselves a break?
---
paragraph four and five
My favorite example of mimesis is the human face, faced with another face as mask and window to the soul. How skilled are we at reading and responding facially, which here means acting, or should I say, feigning insensibly fast, subliminally mirroring reciprocities and anticipations.
But perhaps we should start with something simpler, like the mimesis between the wing of a bird and that of an airplane. Have you never wondered how a cross-section so cunning and simple can lift you off the ground? Now multiply this to infinity-lift off, I should say, start flying-for it is not our world, both artificial and natural, a treasure trove of analogies and similarities? Are not these analogies alive with the reciprocating tension of the gift that binds them and endows them with empathetic force?
But if the bird's wing is a gift to civilization, what does the bird get in return?
That is the question.
---
my lobster is losing brain cells
but i think i have a theory that half his fans are people who find a bullshit artist of the highest order, yet the tangled ideas and syntax just makes it William S. Burroughs cheese made from the Black Centipede, where it is so vile, yet so delicious that people eat it, and vomit, and eat it yet again, till they end up exhausted on the floor in a pool of vomit...
capitivated, trapped and repulsed
November 25, 2024
It's all so meta. It's mimesis of mimesis of mimesis in an infinite hall of mirrors. The world is a matryoshka doll of self-parody. Fair enough. I can buy that. In a world of climate change and authoritarian populists where it seems that all is collapsing, we can see how the phenomenon of self-parody that used to be a tool for ironic commentary in the hands of people in search of the truth now is turned against the people who discovered it. Let's refocus on using it as a tool for good in a way that redoubles its power. When Mr. Taussig sees this happening among the bad guys, he calls it "the irradiative phlegm of the negative sublime," but that's just a label. He doesn't really show how the "Mastery of Non-Mastery" is essentially different in the service of authoritarians from what it is in the service of democrats. Under most of Mr. Taussig's rubric, Mr. Trump is the ultimate master of non-mastery, like him or not, and the devastation of climate change is another example of the wonderous concept of mimesis. I guess that's not so surprising. Both the Jedi and the Sith use the force, but at least in Star Wars there is a clear distinction between good and evil that it based on more than just name calling.
That's only the beginning of my problems with Mr. Taussig's program. What he is advocating is ultimately just naval gazing. I'm fine with seeking enlightenment by turning inward, contemplating fireflies and sunsets and how they can stand for greater meanings and give us passageways into a place where we can intuitively understand how everything is connected without taking LSD. I'm fine with meditating on the awesome power of nature, perhaps especially if it is destroying us in a sort of karmic retribution for our arrogance. But I don't think that it is right to write a book about the "Age of Meltdown" that stops with navel gazing. Where is the humanity in it? Where is the concern for repairing our society and our broken world?
Mr. Taussig's central metaphor is the story of the marvelous juggler whose greatest trick can only be done by hiding a dwarf in one of his balls. The juggler delivers the best performance of his career to the sultan only to discover afterwards that somehow he accomplished the impossible because dwarf was sick and was not hidden in the ball for the crucial part of the show. For Mr. Taussig, this is about the personal perfection of the juggler whose sense of the world around him has been developed to such a point of harmony that he can do the trick without the dwarf in the ball. But I look at it the other way as a story of imperfection and making do. There is no art without the performance for the sultan and the show must go on, but the miracle is not that the juggler could do the trick without the dwarf, it is that he could do the trick with the dwarf, even without the dwarf being physically there. They have a connection that can work even over distance. So to make the world work we all need to perform for sultans and we all need dwarves in our balls. We can't do it alone, and personal mastery, important though it may be, is not enough by itself to repair the world.
That's only the beginning of my problems with Mr. Taussig's program. What he is advocating is ultimately just naval gazing. I'm fine with seeking enlightenment by turning inward, contemplating fireflies and sunsets and how they can stand for greater meanings and give us passageways into a place where we can intuitively understand how everything is connected without taking LSD. I'm fine with meditating on the awesome power of nature, perhaps especially if it is destroying us in a sort of karmic retribution for our arrogance. But I don't think that it is right to write a book about the "Age of Meltdown" that stops with navel gazing. Where is the humanity in it? Where is the concern for repairing our society and our broken world?
Mr. Taussig's central metaphor is the story of the marvelous juggler whose greatest trick can only be done by hiding a dwarf in one of his balls. The juggler delivers the best performance of his career to the sultan only to discover afterwards that somehow he accomplished the impossible because dwarf was sick and was not hidden in the ball for the crucial part of the show. For Mr. Taussig, this is about the personal perfection of the juggler whose sense of the world around him has been developed to such a point of harmony that he can do the trick without the dwarf in the ball. But I look at it the other way as a story of imperfection and making do. There is no art without the performance for the sultan and the show must go on, but the miracle is not that the juggler could do the trick without the dwarf, it is that he could do the trick with the dwarf, even without the dwarf being physically there. They have a connection that can work even over distance. So to make the world work we all need to perform for sultans and we all need dwarves in our balls. We can't do it alone, and personal mastery, important though it may be, is not enough by itself to repair the world.
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