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November 22, 2002
Visual
Studies Series Continues with Michael Taussig
Distinguished anthropologist
and Columbia University professor of anthropology Michael Taussig,
whose work has ranged widely, from the history of African slavery,
abolition in western Colombia, and popular manifestations of the
working of commodity to fetishism, the sociology of malnutrition,
and the impact of colonialism on shamanism and folk healing, will
be the next speaker in The Culture and Nature of the Visual,
the College's yearlong public lecture series focusing on
visual literacy. Taussig, who has also explored the relevance
of modernism and postmodernist aesthetics for the understanding
of ritual, especially shamanic healing; the making, talking, and
writing of terror; and mimesis in relation to sympathetic magic,
state fetishism, and secrecy, will give a lecture titled "The
Language of Flowers: An Approach to Representations of Violence
and the Aesthetics of Cruelty" Thursday, December 5, at 4:30
pm in the art building's Gamble Auditorium. A reception will
follow. The lecture, along with a related faculty seminar, is
cosponsored by the Office of the Dean of Faculty and the Weissman
Center for Leadership.
Says series coorganizer
Debbora Battaglia, professor of anthropology, "Michael Tuassig
is a pioneering force in anthropology and performance studies.
His exploration of magical imagery as a technology of the colonial
state in Latin America has earned him a reputation as one of the
most innovative thinkers on the politics and aesthetics of inequality
writing in any field today."
After earning a degree
in medicine from the University of Sydney, Australia, in 1964
and working for a year as a house physician in the university's
main teaching hospital and later in general practice for six months,
Taussig pursued a master's degree in sociology at the London School
of Economics. At the same time, he worked as a psychiatric resident
in mental hospitals in and around London. He was appointed research
fellow at the Institute of Latin American Studies of London University
in 1969 and began fieldwork on the Violencia in Colombia, South
America, which formed the basis of his doctoral dissertation on
the sociocultural impact of the commercialization of agriculture,
(published in 1975 as Esclavitud y libertad en el valle del
rio Cauca).
Taussig has done fieldwork
in Colombia and Venezuela and has taught at institutions of higher
learning around the world. He has published numerous articles,
written and publicly performed two scripts, and received many
honors, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and
the American Council of Learned Societies. Since 1975 he has published
six books (four in English, two in Spanish). His publications
include The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America
(University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Shamanism, Colonialism,
and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing (University
of Chicago Press, 1987); The Nervous System (Routledge,
1992); Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses
(Routledge, 1993); The Magic of the State (Routledge, 1997);
and Defacement (Stanford University Press, 1999).
Three lectures in
the visual studies series are being planned for next semester.
On February 27, Nina Felshin, adjunct lecturer in art history
at Wesleyan University, will give a talk titled "Ways of
Thinking: Reading the Visual." On April 24, James Young,
professor of English and chair of Judaic studies at the University
of Massachusetts, Amherst, will give a lecture titled "Polemic
in the Spaces of Public Memory." The final lecture of the
series will be May 8, when M. J. T. Mitchell, professor of art
history and English at the University of Chicago's Cochrane-Woods
Art Center will speak on the topic "Living Color: The Animation
of Racial Stereotypes in Spike Lee's film Bamboozled."
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