And the Garden Is You: Essays on Fieldwork, Writingwork, and Readingwork - Softcover

Taussig, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226832406 ISBN 13: 9780226832401

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2024

Synopsis

A new collection of essays reflecting on the centrality of writing anthropological practice from one of the discipline’s most influential thinkers.

Michael Taussig’s work is known for its critical insights and bold, experimental style. In the eleven essays in this new collection, Taussig reflects on the act of writing itself, demonstrating its importance for anthropological practice and calling for the discipline to keep experiential knowledge from being extinguished as fieldnotes become scholarship.

Setting out to show how this can be done, And the Garden Is You exemplifies a form of exploratory writing that preserves the spontaneity of notes scribbled down in haste. In these essays, the author’s reflections take us from his childhood in Sydney to trips to Afghanistan, Colombia, Finland, Italy, Turkey, and Syria. Along the way, Taussig explores themes of fabulation and provocation that are central to his life’s work, in addition to the thinkers dearest to him—Bataille, Benjamin, Burroughs, and Nietzsche, among others. This collection is vintage Taussig, bound to interest longtime readers and newcomers alike.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Taussig is emeritus professor of anthropology at Columbia University. He is the author of several books, including Mastery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown and Palma Africana, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226832406
• ISBN 13: 9780226832401
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200