ABOUT THIS BOOK

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.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

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.

REVIEWS

“With Taussig’s essays, the reader feels like a participant in wide-ranging conversations about the contours of meaning and the synchronicity of ideas across time and discipline. Each essay is a trip, literally and figuratively, of experiential knowledge—ecstatic, tactile, strange, revelatory, and unpredictable—taken in the company of friends. Taussig’s note-taking, with its musings, asides, and fresh impressions, combines with his experience on the ground and in full engagement with the situations encountered, to offer a new and dynamic circuitry of critical thought.”

— Peggy Ahwesh, experimental filmmaker

“In And the Garden Is You, Taussig takes the essay form, and us, into uncharted territories of immanence and magic, on the way to an exploration of the intricate mysteries of ‘fieldwork, writingwork, and readingwork.’ From fieldwork as a ‘clan secret’ among anthropologists to rumor as a contagion that ‘keeps society running’, and from yagé’s hallucinatory imagery to gardens in the revolutionary setting of Rojava, Taussig continually opens up new lines of inquiry and enchantment.”

— David Levi Strauss, author of Photography & Belief

“This essay collection shines with the brilliant insights, surprising prose, theoretical backing band, and laugh-out-loud contrarianism that devoted readers have come to expect from its author. It is needed now more than ever.”

— Lucas Bessire, author of Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Yagé