The Mindfulness of Anthropology

Abstract

rest of the Frankfurt School, was reacting to the failure of Marxism during the First World War, then to the myth-laden symbolic power of Fascism. Disillusioned with mechanical Marxist views of history which proved to be too optimistic, Benjamin emphasized the importance of images and myth as fields of struggle in revolutionary practice. He wanted the left to enlist religion in its cause, to act in the dreamworld of popular imagination, a dreamworld which, by projecting images of the past into the future, was a 'sleeping giant' which could 'break history's mythic spell'. Taussig shows that shamanism also contains this slumbering power of the imagery of the dead'. But identifying shamanism as a form of liberation seems to romanticize its place in the Colombian social order. As the author acknowledges, the awe in which indigenous magic is held reinforces negative stereotypes of Indians. 'The more shamanic, mystic and wild the Indian becomes as a way of exploiting the exploiters,' he notes, 'the more tightly is the noose of ethnic magic and racism drawn'. Shamans are often perceived as charlatans owing to their fees and failures. Yage is a great liar, one of Taussig's informants says: by enabling sufferers to 'see' the supposed source of their problems, it can generate false accusations of witchcraft and justify homicide. As for power, these people have precious little except to cure each other, with the aforementioned mixed results. While Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man is a fascinating exploration of popular iconography, that realm is a highly contradictory and ambiguous one, of what Taussig calls 'implicit networks, smoky trails, manifested but indirectly in the cracks, dreams, and jokes of everyday life'. 'Wherever you go', Taussig notes, 'the great brujos are elsewhere'. In a yage vision, an Indian shaman sees the Colombian army as golden, dancing, singing soldiers. When oppressor and oppressed see each other as curing images, it does not suggest that they will be rid of each other anytime soon.