Prof. em. Dr. Michael T. Taussig

Curriclum

I was born in Sydney Australia of Austrian refugee parents. I studied medicine there, then sociology/anthropology at the LSE 1 in the Vietnam War years 1967-69, then fieldwork in Colombia on the impact of agribusiness on the peasant agriculture of ex-slaves. Starting 1971, I worked on shamanism and terror in the Upper Amazon, then with gold mining ex-slaves on the Pacific Coast of Colombia. I retired from the Anthropology Department of Columbia University in 2020.

Publications (selection)

Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A study in Terror and Healing, Chicago 1987.
The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, Chapel Hill 1988.
Mimesis and Alterity, New York 1993.
My Cocaine Museum, Chicago 2004.
Walter Benjamin’s Grave, Chicago 2006.
I Swear I Saw This, Chicago 2011.
The Corn Wolf, Chicago 2015.
Palma Africana, Chicago 2018.

Research project: Shadowless Being and the Importance of Apotropaic Magic

I am working on a book called "Shadowless Being" based on my cultural anthropological and historical research in Colombia. Since my essay, "The Corn Wolf," in 2016 I have been focussing on alternative or "experimental" modes of writing/representation that I called "corn wolfing" as opposed to what I called "agribusiness writing," meaning mainstream academic writing which, following Enlightenment culture, abjures magic but in fact uses it to appear transparent and scholarly, etc.. Hence I argue for an apotropaic manner of writing that openly admits magic as a protection – as apotropaic – to keep agribusiness writing at bay.

"Shadowless Being" is an exploration of the magical powers imputed to not having a shadow. This focus expands to include echoes and reflections and especially mirrors used in magic since millenia to both reflect and deflect.