Taussig explores the concept of gold through its commonly neglected reality beyond its initial glamor. When we see/think of gold we automatically think of it in terms of its worth and its materialization in items like jewelry. However, what it commonly disregarded is the process of how gold is obtained and what that process actually entails. It is especially evident when recognizing a material such as gold how peoples rationality and emotional states become extremely vulnerable. Gold is a material that has constantly sustained a fairly high level of value and as a result, the ways which humans engage with it can be very troubling. When dealing with objects of high value people tend to be less rationale. Often times, greed and impulse become more highly emphasized than rational and moral concerns, which is why and how objects of extreme value have a capability to control people to a certain extent. When people see gold they automatically associate it with value, worth, and money and those elements can provoke behavior in people that they would not ordinarily exhibit.
In "My Cocaine Museum", Taussig begins by exploring the objects of gold and cocaine. He discusses how it is used in Colombia and compares it to the use in America. In Colombia, they used coca leaves in order to make decisions and make changes throughout their daily life. They depended on the leaves to help make what they felt were the best decisions. Gold was seen also as something beautiful and very rare. Individuals would go out into the rivers and search for as many pieces as possible. In America, cocaine was seen very negatively and was banned from the public. All that was involved with it was trafficking and high crime.
After making the comparison of two objects in different cultures, he begins to emphasize more on the culture in Colombia. He finds it beautiful from their ability to withstand heat, to the people living in the villages. Throughout the book, he connects every chapter to the previous one as he finds the beauty in one object or ideal. It shows how different ideals and culture can be even when discussing the same object. Colombia and America see cocaine in such different perspectives that it seems that they are talking about different objects. The book depicts how objects can have a different value and beauty, depending on where they are and what time frame it is.
We rarely think about how the things we own get to us. You look at a gold bracelet and you remember the store you bought it from but you never think about how it got there, or what it cost the people who mined it in order for it to get to that store. Commodities go through so many different channels and reincarnations to get to us. We, as the consumer, often know very little about the people who work so we can have beautiful things. We do not know what their lives are like or how little they get paid for their work. All we ever really care about is how much it costs us and how little we end up caring about these things that these people worked so hard to get to us.
I found Taussig's approach in My Cocaine Museum to be quite confusing. Without reading the blurb on the back of the book I would have had no idea how the chapters were connected. Taussig does not spend much time explaining his argument, and takes an extremely roundabout way of explaining the lives of gold miners in Latin America. My Cocaine Museum is an interesting read, but i'm unclear on the argumentative point it's trying to make.
Although My Cocaine Museum reads flowingly it is dense with anthropological references and theories I don’t know much about (Walter Benjamin. Goethe, Evans Pritchard) and I’m not sure if knowledge of these authors would deepen my understanding of the book. But overall I really enjoyed the book, its style, and most importantly, the disenchanting effect it has on our reality as Americans as well as on what we value: gold, drugs and cash. After reading Taussig, the perverse and paradoxical relationship between people and these commodities becomes even more flagrant than it was before. (And by that, I mean when we discuss it with one another and acknowledge that the process is dehumanizing but then continue with our daily routines). Rather than learning about the “reality” of gold or diamond mining through Hollywood films or short articles in newspapers, I think Taussig forces the reader to engage with the subject at great length and through his writings and experiences. He kind of applies western knowledge and practicality to non-western societies, which I think not only adds to the comedic value, but also lets the reader know, in a very subtle way, that this application or equation is not realistic and emphasizing the disparities between the two is important. I appreciate his references to Marx and Benjamin and his frequent repetition of the two because at least I know a little bit about where he’s coming from and from what framework. I also think the origins of materials like gold and cocoa leaves are two we know very little about.
I think Taussig makes his intentions quite clear throughout the book and particularly on page 111: “But I don’t want to end up with some smug trade-off between money and nature. I want to alienate money’s alienation. Make its strangeness strange. I want to make going to a store and buying your daily food, for instance, seem like a miracle.” I also really liked when he said things only become obvious after being pointed out (also on page 111). That idea is interesting to think about.
Despite coming off as pretty pretentious and highly privileged, I think Taussig contributes a new way of thinking about ‘things,’ especially things like gold and cocoa leaves. I personally never knew the depth of the problem/process. I find it refreshing to know what Taussig’s approach is since objectivity is the one of the key features of anthropological literature.
On page 259 Taussig states that fossils are a "snapshot", "an abrupbtly stilled slice of time". I tend to think of fossils as an accumulation of many moments, thousands of years worth of moments into one picture. I enjoyed the section on 280ish to 290ish where he wrote about islands and how they "make a mockery of sovereignty". It was an interesting way to look at them. Islands are often used to harbor funds (caymans etc) or as prisons (rikers, etc, Taussig has a long list of examples), or soveriegn states "rent them out" to interrogate and torture suspected taliban members. I'm interested in how physical space georgraphy, etc shape the way in which a place is used. I'm not sure the island mocks sovereignty, however, sometimes he writes clever intriguing phrases which I'm not sure are supported. I tend to think an island as something which is easier to control, easier to compartmentalize and create "borders" in relation to. They are isolate, secretive, if anything they can exacerbate a state's authoritarian power.
I really love the structural aspirations he had for the book, though in reality i found the actual reading experience a bit too expository. so kind of disappointed. it could be that I was trying to read it fast, so it was all probably just me. I found his exploration of mysticism (within things) the most fascinating, the idea that sometimes no matter how hard you look into object, there is something indeterminately irreducible about it. qualities that constantly escapes your rationalization of it, kind of like a coming and going away effect. I think narratively, he really gets that feeling across, especially in sections where he is describing an event that has specific moral/political qualities to it and he kind of takes the side of outrage and fetishistic desire simultaneously (like the prison example). I don't really know how i feel about that, but its very striking from a writing standpoint. This also really reminded me of the Arcades project, but its sort of repetitive of me to say that isn't it.
I particularly enjoyed the chapter title Stone. I’m not sure I fully understood it, but dialectical image was intriguing. The chapter touched briefly on Callois and The Writing of Stones. Callois fascination with stones gives perspective from a different angle of these often immobile objects. Stones are contrasted to the gold and cocaine, trying to make sense of the importance of stones in a greater context. So much of Colombia was shaped by both gold and cocaine, but I’m not sure if I grasp the central idea of My Cocaine Museum. The chapters seemed disjointed, even though the idea always tied back to the central subjects gold and cocaine. It was a very interesting read, Taussing’s writing style was unusual and also thought provoking.
I admire how Taussig approaches the idea of anthropology specifically how he describes situations in reference to thinkers like Benjamin, Heidigger, Battailes, and the way he incorporates the way his surroundings and the meeting people affects him; his writing is not a linear, tradition ethnography of a place, but one that desires to produce a poetic yet critical account. I think what he is interested in are dichotomies such as being/nonbeing, nature/state, and attraction/repulsion, the space that exists between these things all being in opposition, abject and tacit. His references to other thinkers, as well as his own psyche, are all marked by a collective implication towards the darker underbelly of existence, but also an approach that rethinks the idea of beings; he references Heidigger's concept of being as an oscillation between boredom and anxiety, Benjamin on mimicry, and Bataille's notion of formlessness. These influences relate to how Taussig finds gold and cocaine to be transgressive substances, things that defy rational, laws, and produce violence and poverty, all while producing economy. He also talks often about the evil of beauty, and pacts with the devil made by people who hunted for gold, and the physical effects of intangible phenomenon such as natural elements. I am also interested in his relationship to mimicry as formlessness and trickory, and relate a lot to his feeling of being haunted by nature, but also the effect of economy of evil on people. His writing reminds me a Herzog interview, where he talks about all the animals in the rainforest screaming in pain, and the demise of the ecosystem soley by its own existence.
Taussig is a good example of an anthropologist who strays far from producing pieces that present research as such, without much timbre of the personal voice. I have always been one to prefer ethnography to pure research; however, I find that I don't enjoy Taussig's work, simply because his research seems to come almost secondary to his endeavor to write a piece of literature. I also feel as if I would be more inclined to appreciate his flowy tangents if they weren't dominated by references to others whom he especially admires, such as Marx or Benjamin. In addition, Taussig obviously has a high opinion of himself as a writer. While I agree this is important for all writers, I believe that perhaps it should be prevented from being overly apparent in their work. Most of the book, I had a strong mental image of Taussig either admiring himself in the mirror or placing all of his works on pedestals in his home to admire them. It was, quite honestly, distracting.
But I do digress... all of that being said, I'm interested by the way in which Taussig laces Marxian concepts throughout his work. The first reference to Marx in the piece I was actually confused by, for he incorrectly placed two separate fragments of Marxian economic theory (the circulation of capital and the interest rate) together in order to make a point about Marx's idea of the fetish, a third and non-theoretical aspect of Marx. Taussig takes Marx's labor theory of value (the idea that an object's use-value and exchange-value is determined by the congealed labor-power within it) and runs with it, almost too far in my opinion. When referring to gold or cocaine, he says things like "congealed amazement" or "congealed miasma" or "the dialectic at a standstill" (253). I find it difficult to displace a Marxian concept such as the labor theory of value from whence it came, that is it's theoretical framework within economics, in order to apply it in relation to a non-theoretical concept such as the fetish.
10 comments:
Taussig explores the concept of gold through its commonly neglected reality beyond its initial glamor. When we see/think of gold we automatically think of it in terms of its worth and its materialization in items like jewelry. However, what it commonly disregarded is the process of how gold is obtained and what that process actually entails. It is especially evident when recognizing a material such as gold how peoples rationality and emotional states become extremely vulnerable. Gold is a material that has constantly sustained a fairly high level of value and as a result, the ways which humans engage with it can be very troubling.
When dealing with objects of high value people tend to be less rationale. Often times, greed and impulse become more highly emphasized than rational and moral concerns, which is why and how objects of extreme value have a capability to control people to a certain extent. When people see gold they automatically associate it with value, worth, and money and those elements can provoke behavior in people that they would not ordinarily exhibit.
In "My Cocaine Museum", Taussig begins by exploring the objects of gold and cocaine. He discusses how it is used in Colombia and compares it to the use in America. In Colombia, they used coca leaves in order to make decisions and make changes throughout their daily life. They depended on the leaves to help make what they felt were the best decisions. Gold was seen also as something beautiful and very rare. Individuals would go out into the rivers and search for as many pieces as possible. In America, cocaine was seen very negatively and was banned from the public. All that was involved with it was trafficking and high crime.
After making the comparison of two objects in different cultures, he begins to emphasize more on the culture in Colombia. He finds it beautiful from their ability to withstand heat, to the people living in the villages. Throughout the book, he connects every chapter to the previous one as he finds the beauty in one object or ideal. It shows how different ideals and culture can be even when discussing the same object. Colombia and America see cocaine in such different perspectives that it seems that they are talking about different objects. The book depicts how objects can have a different value and beauty, depending on where they are and what time frame it is.
We rarely think about how the things we own get to us. You look at a gold bracelet and you remember the store you bought it from but you never think about how it got there, or what it cost the people who mined it in order for it to get to that store. Commodities go through so many different channels and reincarnations to get to us. We, as the consumer, often know very little about the people who work so we can have beautiful things. We do not know what their lives are like or how little they get paid for their work. All we ever really care about is how much it costs us and how little we end up caring about these things that these people worked so hard to get to us.
I found Taussig's approach in My Cocaine Museum to be quite confusing. Without reading the blurb on the back of the book I would have had no idea how the chapters were connected. Taussig does not spend much time explaining his argument, and takes an extremely roundabout way of explaining the lives of gold miners in Latin America. My Cocaine Museum is an interesting read, but i'm unclear on the argumentative point it's trying to make.
Although My Cocaine Museum reads flowingly it is dense with anthropological references and theories I don’t know much about (Walter Benjamin. Goethe, Evans Pritchard) and I’m not sure if knowledge of these authors would deepen my understanding of the book. But overall I really enjoyed the book, its style, and most importantly, the disenchanting effect it has on our reality as Americans as well as on what we value: gold, drugs and cash. After reading Taussig, the perverse and paradoxical relationship between people and these commodities becomes even more flagrant than it was before. (And by that, I mean when we discuss it with one another and acknowledge that the process is dehumanizing but then continue with our daily routines). Rather than learning about the “reality” of gold or diamond mining through Hollywood films or short articles in newspapers, I think Taussig forces the reader to engage with the subject at great length and through his writings and experiences. He kind of applies western knowledge and practicality to non-western societies, which I think not only adds to the comedic value, but also lets the reader know, in a very subtle way, that this application or equation is not realistic and emphasizing the disparities between the two is important. I appreciate his references to Marx and Benjamin and his frequent repetition of the two because at least I know a little bit about where he’s coming from and from what framework. I also think the origins of materials like gold and cocoa leaves are two we know very little about.
I think Taussig makes his intentions quite clear throughout the book and particularly on page 111: “But I don’t want to end up with some smug trade-off between money and nature. I want to alienate money’s alienation. Make its strangeness strange. I want to make going to a store and buying your daily food, for instance, seem like a miracle.” I also really liked when he said things only become obvious after being pointed out (also on page 111). That idea is interesting to think about.
Despite coming off as pretty pretentious and highly privileged, I think Taussig contributes a new way of thinking about ‘things,’ especially things like gold and cocoa leaves. I personally never knew the depth of the problem/process. I find it refreshing to know what Taussig’s approach is since objectivity is the one of the key features of anthropological literature.
On page 259 Taussig states that fossils are a "snapshot", "an abrupbtly stilled slice of time". I tend to think of fossils as an accumulation of many moments, thousands of years worth of moments into one picture.
I enjoyed the section on 280ish to 290ish where he wrote about islands and how they "make a mockery of sovereignty". It was an interesting way to look at them. Islands are often used to harbor funds (caymans etc) or as prisons (rikers, etc, Taussig has a long list of examples), or soveriegn states "rent them out" to interrogate and torture suspected taliban members. I'm interested in how physical space georgraphy, etc shape the way in which a place is used. I'm not sure the island mocks sovereignty, however, sometimes he writes clever intriguing phrases which I'm not sure are supported. I tend to think an island as something which is easier to control, easier to compartmentalize and create "borders" in relation to. They are isolate, secretive, if anything they can exacerbate a state's authoritarian power.
I really love the structural aspirations he had for the book, though in reality i found the actual reading experience a bit too expository. so kind of disappointed. it could be that I was trying to read it fast, so it was all probably just me.
I found his exploration of mysticism (within things) the most fascinating, the idea that sometimes no matter how hard you look into object, there is something indeterminately irreducible about it. qualities that constantly escapes your rationalization of it, kind of like a coming and going away effect. I think narratively, he really gets that feeling across, especially in sections where he is describing an event that has specific moral/political qualities to it and he kind of takes the side of outrage and fetishistic desire simultaneously (like the prison example). I don't really know how i feel about that, but its very striking from a writing standpoint.
This also really reminded me of the Arcades project, but its sort of repetitive of me to say that isn't it.
I particularly enjoyed the chapter title Stone. I’m not sure I fully understood it, but dialectical image was intriguing. The chapter touched briefly on Callois and The Writing of Stones. Callois fascination with stones gives perspective from a different angle of these often immobile objects. Stones are contrasted to the gold and cocaine, trying to make sense of the importance of stones in a greater context. So much of Colombia was shaped by both gold and cocaine, but I’m not sure if I grasp the central idea of My Cocaine Museum. The chapters seemed disjointed, even though the idea always tied back to the central subjects gold and cocaine. It was a very interesting read, Taussing’s writing style was unusual and also thought provoking.
I admire how Taussig approaches the idea of anthropology specifically how he describes situations in reference to thinkers like Benjamin, Heidigger, Battailes, and the way he incorporates the way his surroundings and the meeting people affects him; his writing is not a linear, tradition ethnography of a place, but one that desires to produce a poetic yet critical account. I think what he is interested in are dichotomies such as being/nonbeing, nature/state, and attraction/repulsion, the space that exists between these things all being in opposition, abject and tacit. His references to other thinkers, as well as his own psyche, are all marked by a collective implication towards the darker underbelly of existence, but also an approach that rethinks the idea of beings; he references Heidigger's concept of being as an oscillation between boredom and anxiety, Benjamin on mimicry, and Bataille's notion of formlessness. These influences relate to how Taussig finds gold and cocaine to be transgressive substances, things that defy rational, laws, and produce violence and poverty, all while producing economy. He also talks often about the evil of beauty, and pacts with the devil made by people who hunted for gold, and the physical effects of intangible phenomenon such as natural elements. I am also interested in his relationship to mimicry as formlessness and trickory, and relate a lot to his feeling of being haunted by nature, but also the effect of economy of evil on people. His writing reminds me a Herzog interview, where he talks about all the animals in the rainforest screaming in pain, and the demise of the ecosystem soley by its own existence.
Taussig is a good example of an anthropologist who strays far from producing pieces that present research as such, without much timbre of the personal voice. I have always been one to prefer ethnography to pure research; however, I find that I don't enjoy Taussig's work, simply because his research seems to come almost secondary to his endeavor to write a piece of literature. I also feel as if I would be more inclined to appreciate his flowy tangents if they weren't dominated by references to others whom he especially admires, such as Marx or Benjamin. In addition, Taussig obviously has a high opinion of himself as a writer. While I agree this is important for all writers, I believe that perhaps it should be prevented from being overly apparent in their work. Most of the book, I had a strong mental image of Taussig either admiring himself in the mirror or placing all of his works on pedestals in his home to admire them. It was, quite honestly, distracting.
But I do digress... all of that being said, I'm interested by the way in which Taussig laces Marxian concepts throughout his work. The first reference to Marx in the piece I was actually confused by, for he incorrectly placed two separate fragments of Marxian economic theory (the circulation of capital and the interest rate) together in order to make a point about Marx's idea of the fetish, a third and non-theoretical aspect of Marx. Taussig takes Marx's labor theory of value (the idea that an object's use-value and exchange-value is determined by the congealed labor-power within it) and runs with it, almost too far in my opinion. When referring to gold or cocaine, he says things like "congealed amazement" or "congealed miasma" or "the dialectic at a standstill" (253). I find it difficult to displace a Marxian concept such as the labor theory of value from whence it came, that is it's theoretical framework within economics, in order to apply it in relation to a non-theoretical concept such as the fetish.
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