What Color Is the Sacred

IF 0.2 Q4 SOCIOLOGY
Christopher J. Gilbert
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引用次数: 62

Abstract

What Color Is the Sacred? By Michael Taussig 2009. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press ISBN-13: 978-0-226-79006-0. To approach this book as if it is simply about colour, a final word on the history of colour, or even the colour of history would be amiss. Rather, one should go in with the understanding that, at its core, Taussig's project is a critique of experience. It is an in-depth, provocative exploration of life in colour (and colour in life) that begins in the seventh century AD and culminates in the present day. Indeed, the title could easily be figured as a rhetorical question and rewritten to read, 'what is sacred about colour?' This, after all, is the question that Taussig attempts to answer by way of a genealogical account and quasi-ethnography of colour itself. In a mix and mingle of prose, poetry and aphorism, he blends first-hand accounts, second-hand interpretations, and a first-rate rhetorical invention that borrows insights from Walter Benjamin, William S. Burroughs, Marcel Proust and Friedrich Nietzsche. He begins by establishing a myriad of anecdotal accounts of colour that reappear throughout the book. Taking then as a given Goethe's notion that, in a natural state, uncivilized persons have an innate affinity for colour, Taussig recounts Western civilisation's proscription of colourlessness as a sign of refinement. Draped on bodies as clothing and upon the material world as decor, colour in the West, he contends, has become a matter of taste, a concord of experience and intellect, as well as a cause for "chromophobia. Recognising the contradictions, Taussig argues that this represents colour's core ambiguity, its oscillation between deceit and authenticity. Here he builds off his earlier work on light and heat in My Cocaine Museum to found a link between calor (heat) and colour, which eventually leads him to connect both with global warming. Prior to this, however, Taussig charts the colonisation of colour from the ethnographic work of Bronislaw Makinowski, who ostensibly formulated the standard Western notions of subjectivity. Specifically, he positions colonial authority as white and clothed, and indigenous Others as dark, naked and obscene. Yet a look at Makinowski's diaries reveals, Taussig claims, the contrivance of relational colourings. They also expose Makinowski as a parody of himself, a studious subject that was simultaneously an object of study. Underscored by Benjamin's notion of the 'mimetic faculty,' Taussig lauds such blurrings of self and otherness, colour and ritual, body and landscape as means for recapturing experience. He advances this further by interrogating the relationship of colour to slavery. Particularly, he shows how the purchase of slaves with coloured clothing during the African slave trade is a luminous shell that blinds the eye from a dark underbelly- the underbelly, Taussig posits, is the history of indigo. …
什么颜色是神圣的
什么颜色是神圣的?作者:Michael Taussig, 2009。芝加哥:芝加哥大学出版社ISBN-13: 978-0-226-79006-0。如果把这本书仅仅看作是一本关于颜色的书,那么对颜色的历史,甚至是历史的颜色做最后的评述都是错误的。相反,人们应该理解,在其核心,陶西格的项目是对经验的批判。这是对色彩中的生活(以及生活中的色彩)的一次深入而富有挑衅性的探索,始于公元七世纪,并在今天达到高潮。事实上,这个标题很容易被理解为一个反问句,并被改写为“颜色有什么神圣之处?”毕竟,这是Taussig试图通过对族谱的描述和对颜色本身的准民族志来回答的问题。在散文、诗歌和格言的混合中,他融合了第一手资料、二手解释,以及借鉴了沃尔特·本雅明、威廉·s·巴勒斯、马塞尔·普鲁斯特和弗里德里希·尼采的见解的一流修辞发明。他首先建立了无数关于颜色的轶事,这些故事在书中反复出现。根据歌德的观点,在自然状态下,未开化的人对颜色有一种天生的亲和力,陶西格叙述了西方文明对无色的禁止,认为这是文雅的标志。他认为,在西方,色彩作为衣服披在身体上,作为装饰披在物质世界上,已经成为一种品味,一种经验和智力的和谐,以及“色彩恐惧症”的原因。认识到这些矛盾,陶西格认为这代表了颜色的核心模糊性,它在欺骗和真实之间摇摆。在《我的可卡因博物馆》中,他以早期关于光和热的作品为基础,发现了热量和颜色之间的联系,这最终使他将两者与全球变暖联系起来。然而,在此之前,Taussig从Bronislaw Makinowski的民族志作品中描绘了色彩的殖民化,Bronislaw Makinowski表面上阐述了标准的西方主体性概念。具体来说,他将殖民当局定位为白人和穿着衣服,而将土著其他人定位为黑暗,裸体和淫秽。然而,陶西格声称,看一看马基诺夫斯基的日记,就会发现关系色彩的发明。他们还揭露了马基诺夫斯基是对自己的恶搞,一个勤奋好学的主题,同时也是一个研究对象。在本雅明的“模仿能力”概念的强调下,陶西格称赞这种自我和他者、色彩和仪式、身体和景观的模糊,作为重新获得体验的手段。他进一步探究了肤色与奴隶制的关系。特别是,他展示了在非洲奴隶贸易中,购买穿着彩色衣服的奴隶是如何成为一个发光的外壳,蒙蔽了人们的眼睛,使人们看不到黑暗的腹部——陶西格认为,这个腹部是靛蓝的历史。…
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来源期刊
SOCIAL ALTERNATIVES
SOCIAL ALTERNATIVES SOCIOLOGY-
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