Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses

315 Pages·1992·29.11 MB·English

by  Michael Taussig

MIMESIS
AND
ALTER lTV
IVIIMESIS
AND
ALTER lTV
A
PARTICULAR HISTORY
OF THE SENSES
MICHAEL TAUSSIG
~~ ~~o~;~;n~~~up
New York London
Published in 1993 by
Routledge
An imprint of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.
29 West 35 Street
New York, NY 10001
Published in Great Britain in 1993 by
Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane
London EC4P 4EE
Copyright <D 1993 by Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America on acid free paper.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or re
trieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Taussig, Michael T.
Mimesis and alterity : a particular history of the senses I
Michael Taussig.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-90686-5 (hb)-ISBN 0-415-90687-3 (pb)
1. Ethnology-Philosophy. 2. Imitation-Cross-cultural studies.
3. Difference (Philosophy).-Cross-cultural studies. 4. Mimesis in
art. I. Title.
GN345.T37 1991
306-dc20 92-35584
CIP
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data also available.
Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very
close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction.
Walter Benjamin "The Work of Art in the Age
of Mechanical Reproduction," 1936
CoNTENTS
Acknowledgements lX
A Report to the Academy Xlll
1. In Some Way or Another One Can Protect Oneself 1
From Evil Spirits by Portraying Them
2. Physiognomic Aspects of Visual Worlds 19
3. Spacing Out 33
4. The Golden Bough: The Magic of Mimesis 44
5. The Golden Army: The Organization of Mimesis 59
6. With the Wind of World History in Our Sails 70
7. Spirit of the Mime, Spirit of the Gift 88
8. Mimetic Worlds: Invisible Counterparts 100
9. The Origin of the World 112
10. Alterity 129
11. The Color of Alterity 144
12. The Search For the White Indian 162
VII
MIMESIS AND AL TERITY
13. America as Woman: The Magic of Western Gear 176
14. The Talking Machine 193
15. His Master's Voice 212
16. Reflection 236
17. Sympathetic Magic In A Post-Colonial Age 250
Notes 257
Bibliography 283
Index 291
Vlll
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I like to think of writing itself as a mimetic exchange with the
world-a cast of mind that helps me understand how deeply this
idiosyncratic book on the mimetic faculty in its relation to primitivism
is indebted to the students and faculty of the Department of Perfor
mance Studies, the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.
Here I was encouraged, as never before, to consider the political art
and social power of make-believe, the reality of the really made-up
the foundation, in other words, of modern sociology, anthropology,
and critical self-awareness.
To Susan Buck-Morss, for her stunningly original work on Walter
Benjamin, I am also indebted, not least for her treatment of mimesis
in relation to modernity's primitivism. This pivotal relation was im
pressed upon me through Gertrude Koch's work on film, as well.
Margaret Cohen made me appreciate the power of Surrealism in Benja
min's Marxism. Charles Merewether got me thinking about the healing
power of mimicry as in wooden figurines used by Cuna healers off the
coasts of Panama and Colombia, and Dorothea and Norman Whitten
provided the opportunity to publicly air my initial response in a sympo
sium on shamanism, a response that was sharpened by Anna Blume
inviting me to address her colleagues in art history. Discussions with
Lynda Hill concerning her forthcoming work on Zora Neale Hurston
made me understand better the distancing effects of copying. Calm
infrastructural support was provided by Mark Sussman. Lorna Price
ix
MIMESIS AND ALTERITY
once again served meticulously as copy-editor, no less sympathetic to
the project than with its need to be communicable.
To the Cuna themselves, as much as their ethnographers, beginning
with Ruben Perez Kantule and Erland Nordenskiold, I owe much and
I hope they will understand my many excesses of interpretation-as if
interpretation could be anything else. I have never travelled to Panama
or the San Bias islands, present home of the Cuna, and I have borrowed
much from N.M. Chapin's very fine doctoral thesis on Cuna healing
and from Joel Sherzer's illuminating studies on Cuna language. Carlo
Severi responded warmly and cautioned me on the Nia chant. Stephanie
Kane's work on Embera life in the Darien provided with me a bridge
to the Pacific coast of Colombia, a coast I first visited in 1971, and she
also provided a stimulating model of writing not constructed around
what Jim Clifford has called "ethnographic authority". Drawing upon
his great fund of knowledge of things Central American, Charlie Hale
provided me with a cartoon illustrating early U.S. attitudes towards
Panama. Pamela Sankar and Paul Rabinow encouraged me to think
about finger prints and mimesis.
My training (although "training" sounds too formal) in the magic
of mimesis was through the tutelage of Santiago Mutumbajoy, of
Mocoa, Putumayo, Colombia, beginning in 1975. My understanding
of African-Colombian history and the legacy of African slavery in
northern South America, including Panama, came through several
years of working on the history of slave haciendas and on the abolition
of slavery in northern Cauca, where I lived in Puerto Tejada thanks to
the generosity of many people, especially Marlene Jimenez, Guillermo
Llanos, Eusebio Cambindo, Felipe Carbonera, Tomas Zapata, Olivia
Mostacilla, and Jose Domingo Murillo. Julie Taylor and George Mar
cus provided the encouragement that a post-colonial, culturally sensi
tive, anthropology of signification is possible, necessary, and necessar
ily exciting-a project that for me has meant coming to grips with the
dialectic of civilization-and-savagery installed in contemporary signi
fying practices themselves. And in this I have benefited from the trans
gressive confluence of anxiety and insight in the work, spoken and
written, of Cornell West and Paul Gilroy.
To declare that writing itself is a mimetic exchange with the world
X
AcKNOWLEDGMENTS
also means that it involves the relatively unexplored but everyday
capacity to imagine, if not become, Other. Benjamin sought a model
for this capacity in what he understood to be "ancient" magical prac
tices, no less than in the games of children. Here I need to add another
practice, the to and fro of discussion-especially with Rachel Moore
from whom so many thoughts were thus drawn, it being often impossi
ble to claim single authorship. "The perception of similarity," wrote
Benjamin in relation to the mimetic faculty, "is in every case bound to
an instantaneous flash. It slips past, can possibly be regained, but
cannot be held fast, unlike other perceptions. It offers itself as fleetingly
and transitorily as a constellation of stars." I would like to think this
book is just such an offering.
Acknowledgements of Illustrations
Erland Nordenskiold and Ruben Perez, ed. Henry Wassen, An Ethno
logical and Historical Survey of the Cuna Indians (1938); Gerardo
Reichel-Dolmatoff, "Anthropomorphic Figurines from Colombia,
Their Magic and Art," 1961; Alfonso Dfaz Granados in Leonor Her
rera and Marianne Cardale de Schrimpf£, "Mitologia Cuna: Los Kalu"
(1974); R. 0. Marsh, White Indians of Darien (1934); National An
thropological Archive, Smithsonian Institution, Washington; British
Museum; Bibliotheque Nacional, Paris; Quinta de Bolfvar, Bogota;
Ann Parker and Avon Neal, Molas: Folk Art of the Cuna Indians
(1977); Frances Hubbard Flaherty, Robert Flaherty, The Odyssey of
a Film-Maker: Robert Flaherty's Story (1984); Les Blank and James
Bogan, Burden of Dreams (1984); Museum of Anthropology, Univer
sity of Cambridge; Alexander Buchner, Mechanical Musical Instru
ments (1978); Francis Galton, Finger Prints (1965); Oliver Read and
M. L. Welch, From Tin Foil to Stereo: Evolution of the Phonograph,
1976; Herbert Cole, 1967.
XI