Corpse Magic

Echoes Active in the Slayer-Slain Nexus

Michael Taussig

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English

University of Chicago Press
22 April 2025

Violence in society; Ethnic studies; Social & cultural anthropology

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.

By: Michael Taussig
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 426g
ISBN: 9780226837413
ISBN 10: 0226837416
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 22 April 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

List of Illustrations Method in the Madness and Vice Versa The Living and the Dead 1. Thickening 2. Hollowing 3. Some Anthropology of Slaying The Break-In 4. The Break-In 5. Fetishistic Fastidiousness 6. Who Does the Killing? 7. Realignment of Landscape 8. God Spots and the No-Go Zones 9. From Corpse Magic to Corpse Montage Hence the Problem Facing the Writer 10. How to Kill a Corpse 11. Reenchantment 12. Corpse and Temple 13. The Funeral March 14. Disappearance of the Death Watch 15. State Execution 16. Vengeance and Repentance Preposterous Equations 17. A Jesuit Seminar Room in Bogotá 18. Gun Fetishism 19. Statistical Legerdemain 20. Auto-Mobilized Death-Space 21. Killing Animals versus Killing Humans 22. The Taboo on Portraying Killing 23. Nuer-Effect: Present or Absent or Both? Notes Index

Michael Taussig is emeritus professor of anthropology at Columbia University. He is the author of many books, including And the Garden Is You and Mastery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews for Corpse Magic: Echoes Active in the Slayer-Slain Nexus

""An engaging and engrossing book. Taussig's style of reading is a model for everyday cultural literacy.""-- ""Christopher Bracken, author of Magical Criticism: The Recourse of Savage Philosophy"" ""This is pure Taussig. In his latest, he ruminates and loops through the vicissitudes of corpse magic and the many forms it takes in Colombia and beyond--a subject as important and underexplored as it is uncanny.""-- ""Alexander L. Fattal, author of Guerrilla Marketing: Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia""