Michael Taussig

Michael Taussig ( born April 3, 1940 in Sydney ) is an Australian anthropologist. Although he has published on the topic of medical anthropology, he is best known for his engagement with Marx's idea of commodity fetishism 'is known, especially in regard to the works of Walter Benjamin.

Biography

Taussig studied medicine at the University of Sydney. He earned a medical degree, a doctorate in anthropology at the London School of Economics and is a professor at Columbia University.

Work

Taussig was both heavily influenced by the Frankfurt School of critical theory as well as the French post-structuralism, and thus became a part of the shift in the 1980s in the field of anthropology. His work contributed to a growing mistrust of cultural analysis from the perspective of the dominant Western capitalist culture. It was his early experiences as a doctor in Colombia in the late 1960s that affected a fundamental change in his view of the role of stories and narratives about and against objective science in Arts Education. Ethnography was a conscious positive force in this culture. This led to the Taussig incipient mixing of fact and fiction in his ethnographic studies, and thus to its status as a figure of controversy in the field of anthropology.

Publications

• Mimesis and Alterity. Routledge, New York City 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A different history of the senses. European publishing house, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-434-52000-7.

• Field notebook - field research books. ( Documenta (13)). Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2011, ISBN 978-3-7757-2850-8.