Corpse Magic : Echoes Active in the Slayer-Slain Nexus.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Taussig, Michael T.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (0 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2025.

Summary:

Corpse Magic examines beliefs about vengeance the slain magically enact on their killers, focusing on lethal violence in Colombia and the United States. Corpse Magic is a response to the global ubiquity of violence. In this bracing new work, the influential anthropologist Michael Taussig puts killings in Colombia, by gangs and guerrillas, police and the military, and agents of agribusiness, in conversation with mass shootings and police killings, disproportionately of Black people, in the United States. In both contexts, he examines the effects of violent killing on its victims, its perpetrators, and those who witness and relive it through media footage. Drawing from literature, religion, philosophy, and anthropology, Taussig traces the idea that the act of killing “infects” the killer and spreads outward, then connects this concept of contagion to beliefs in Colombia and elsewhere that the souls of the slain possess those of their slayers and that magic can be used to empower or thwart corpses as agents of vengeance. In this powerful and imaginative work, Taussig asks what kind of power the dead continue to have; what kinds of magic can manage that power; and what, if anything, can stop seemingly endless cycles of violence.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Method in the Madness and Vice Versa

The Living and the Dead

The Break-In

Hence the Problem Facing the Writer

Preposterous Equations

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES

INDEX

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780226837406

0226837408

OCLC:

1499927285