Mimesis and Alterity

A Particular History of the Senses

Bibliographic Data

ID20433530
AuthorsMichael Taussig (corresponding author)
Year2018
Publication date2018-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueMimesis and Alterity (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherTaylor & Francis Group (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4324/9781315227689
OpenAlexW4253307116
ISBN9781315227689
Open LibraryOL40022780M
LanguageEN
Citations received65

In this ambitious and accomplished work, Taussig explores the complex and interwoven concepts of mimesis, the practice of imitation, and alterity, the opposition of Self and Other. The book moves from the nineteenth-century invention of mimetically capacious machines, such as the camera, to the fable of colonial ‘first contact’ and the alleged mimetic power of ‘primitives’. Twenty years after the original publication, Taussig revisits the work in a new preface which contextualises the impact of Mimesis and Alterity. Drawing on the ideas of Benjamin, Adorno and Horckheimer and ethnographic accounts of the Cuna, Taussig demonstrates how the history of mimesis is deeply tied to colonialism and the idea of alterity has become increasingly unstable. Vigorous and unorthodox, this cross-cultural discussion continues to deepen our understanding of the relationship between ethnography, racism and society.

Alterity · Colonialism · Cuna · Epistemology · ethnographic photography · Ethnography · first contact · Herbert Marcuse · Imitation · Mimesis · otherness · primitivism · Racism · self and other · Theodor W. Adorno · Walter Benjamin · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Cultural Studies and Colonialism · German Literature and Culture Studies · Philosophy · Violence, Religion, and Philosophy · Cross-cultural studies · Différence (philosophie) · Difference (philosophy) · Ethnology · Études transculturelles · Imitation (Psychologie) · Mimesis in art