Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
![Loading indicator](/images/ajax-loader-bar.gif)
"Mimesis: the idea of imitation. Alterity: the idea of difference, the opposition of Self and Other. In his most accomplished work to date, Michael Taussig explores these complex and often interwoven concepts. Arguing that mimesis is the nature that culture uses to create second nature, he maintains that mimesis - variously experienced in different societies - is not only a faculty but also a history. That history, Taussig writes, is deeply tied to "Euroamerican colonialism, the felt relation of the civilizing process to savagery, to aping, sensateness caught in the net of passionful images spun for several centuries by the colonial trade with wildness."" "For anthropologists, social scientists, cultural critics, artists and everyone else caught up in the enigma of the postmodern, framing the question "What is Reality" is crucial to gaining an understanding of what it is we know and who we are. Why is it important to understand that traditions are inventions and that social life is a construction when they grip us with all the force of the "natural"? And how is it that we understand reality as both real and really made up?" "In Mimesis and Alterity Taussig undertakes an eccentric history of the mimetic faculty. He moves easily from the nineteenth-century invention of mimetically capacious machines, such as the camera, backwards to the fable of colonial "first-contact" and alleged mimetic prowess of "primitives," and then forward to contemporary time, when the idea of alterity is increasingly unstable. Utilizing anthropological theory, Taussig blends Latin American ethnography and colonial history with the insights of Walter Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer. Vigorous and unorthodox, Taussig's understanding of mimesis in different cultures deepens our meanings of ethnography, racism and society."--BOOK JACKET.
Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
![Loading indicator](/images/ajax-loader-bar.gif)
Previews available in: English
Subjects
Cross-cultural studies, Mimesis in art, Ethnology, Imitation, Difference (Philosophy), Philosophy, Impersonation, Ethnologie, Philosophie, Études transculturelles, Différence (Philosophie), Mimêsis in art, Imitation (Psychologie), Mimêsis, Mimesis, 08.42 philosophy of culture, 08.36 philosophical anthropology, philosophy of psychology, POLITICAL SCIENCE, Public Policy, Cultural Policy, SOCIAL SCIENCE, Anthropology, Cultural, Popular Culture, Anthropologie, Differenz, Kulturvergleich, Das Andere, Kulturphilosophie, Representatie (algemeen), Constructivisme, Culturele identiteit, Cuna (volk), Differentiefilosofie, Dans l'art, Altérité (philosophie), Imitation (art)Showing 1 featured edition. View all 1 editions?
Edition | Availability |
---|---|
1
Mimesis and alterity: a particular history of the senses
1993, Routledge
in English
0415906865 9780415906869
|
aaaa
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. 283-290) and index.
Classifications
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Community Reviews (0)
Feedback?July 21, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
December 15, 2022 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
April 28, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Linked existing covers to the work. |
February 13, 2010 | Edited by WorkBot | add more information to works |
December 8, 2009 | Created by ImportBot | add works page |