Michael Taussig

"And this is, after all, the lot of our disciplines of History and Anthropology, their fundamental power lying in their stockpiling the excess without which meaning and representation could not exist, namely, the belief in the literal basis to metaphor--that once upon a time, or in distant places, human sacrifice and spirit possession and miracles did occur, and ghosts and spirits, sorcerers and witches, gods and people making devil's pacts did walk the face of the earth. History and Anthropology become, together with the folk tale and a certain type of popular wisdom, the depositories and proof of those unbelievable acts required now by language to carry off its tricks of reference, its tropes and figures."… (meer)

Taussig's reflections on writing and how randomness influences thinking, and that peculiar species of random endemic to memories of events, even after notating them.

Key concept: Roland Barthes' distaste for diary disease, with the notable exception of 'phantom thoughts': "[when] re-reading an entry several months or years later ... the awakening of a memory not in what was written but in 'the interstices of notation'." [4] Taussig later argues, it is precisely because it is not recorded that we recollect the phantom memory. [10] "Let me emphasize this strange place where the unwritten thrives because of the written." [12]

Related preoccupations of Walter Benjamin, WSB, Le Corbusier, Joan Didion, Jean Genet.

Taussig latches onto Benjamin's notion of magic encyclopedia, as described in his essay "Unpacking My Library": "Because the items in a collection gravitate into one's hands by chance, a collection can be used as an instrument of divination, seeing that chance is the flip side of fate." [Taussig's words not Benjamin's, 5] Taussig goes on: "In other words, chance determines (what an odd phrase!) what goes into the collection, and chance determines how it is used. ... But I want to add still another feature that applies to the magic of the magic encyclopedia, and this is the way the notebook is actually an extension of oneself, if not more self than oneself, like an entirely new organ alongside one's heart and brain, to name but the more evocative organs of our inner self."

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Ideally, my written reflections aim to capture the lightning flash of insight obtained from a text, rather than inventory my stepwise progress through it. (Though my notes while reading very much resemble a bulleted outline.) And yet, upon re-reading months or years later, I do not recall ever encountering phantom memories.

Rather, re-reading maintains or awakens the initial impression I attempted to capture at the time of writing. This might have more to do with the fact I do not put my notes away for months or years, but re-read them more or less regularly. Reviews serving as monuments or memorials, then, and not akin to Taussig's fieldwork notebooks.

One similarity: often best to write what spontaneously occurs to me, rather than force the review I had planned. Often this results from time pressures, and I concede the utility of writing something, whatever comes to mind as I sit down at that moment: better than waiting forever to write the perfectly crafted review. But I do not allow myself this encounter with the random enough.

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Is this Taussig's only contribution to the series? Or does he write 100?… (meer)

This took a while, not because it wasn't interesting. What he has to say about the function of secrets and the unsecret secrets you have to pretend you don't know, that everybody else pretends not to know, is very interesting. I just would have read it faster if there were more silk-hatted cads and young women left to find their own level. This was a bit drier than that.
So it tended to lay about the house like Andy Capp and become known as the book with the ass on the cover. 'Mom. Where are my cleats?' 'By the stairs, next to the table with the book with the ass on the cover.' 'Found them!'
Sometimes I would lose the book itself, but never for long. Somebody in the house always remembered where they had last seen it. And now I have finished this book that over the years has become a important household artifact. It has served us well as both compass and map in our chaos. What do I do now? Pass it on to the next generation along with the silver and the Depression glass? Which child?
Decisions, decisions.… (meer)