The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America by Michael Taussig

The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America by Michael Taussig

In this classic book, Michael Taussig explores the social significance of the devil in the folklore of contemporary plantation workers and miners in South America. Grounding his analysis in Marxist theory, Taussig finds that the fetishization of evil, in the image of the devil, mediates the conflict between precapitalist and capitalist modes of objectifying the human condition. He links traditional narratives of the devil-pact, in which the soul is bartered for illusory or transitory power, with the way in which production in capitalist economies causes workers to become alienated from the commodities they produce. A new chapter for this anniversary edition features a discussion of Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille that extends Taussig's ideas about the devil-pact metaphor.

"Original, acute, and admirable" - The New York Review of Books "[Taussig] gives us superb ethnography, a Marxist critique of world capitalism, a lesson in analogical and dialectical techniques (some of them bordering on the mystical), and argues convincingly that humanist interpretation can be as empirically 'hard' as scientific measurement." - American Anthropologist"

Michael T. Taussig is professor of anthropology at Columbia University. He is author of ten books, including What Color Is the Sacred? and Walter Benjamin's Grave.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780807871331
ISBN 10	0807871338
Title	The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America
Author	Michael Taussig
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The University of North Carolina Press
Year published	2010-03-30
Number of pages	320
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable