The Corn Wolf

In the vein of his books "The""Nervous System "and "Walter Benjamin s "Grave, "The Corn Wolf "presents a collection of essays that capture well Michael Taussig s ongoing development/trajectory as a writer and his recent move toward storytelling "as" theory. The thrust, in a nutshell, is to extend and develop the contrast between the "Nervous System "style of writing, writing that arises from what Taussig calls the bodily unconscious, and what he now refers to as agribusiness writing, a type of writing that strips ethnography not only of its capacity to surprise but also to connect with another world. Taussig defends ethnography from agribusiness writing just as the corn wolf in Frazer s "Golden Bough" inspirits and defends agricultural crops from the reapers. A crucial aspect of this analogy is that the corn animal "occupies" the field protecting it from disease and disaster, in short from profanation. Taussig calls this apotropaic magic as opposed to the magic that transforms crops (read ethnography ) into mere food (read scholarly article or theory ). His essays explore the idea of occupation in a variety of contexts and meanings such as Palestine and Wall Street."