And the Garden Is You

“With Taussig’s essays, the reader feels like a participant in wide-ranging conversations about the contours of meaning and the synchronicity of ideas across time and discipline. Each essay is a trip, literally and figuratively, of experiential knowledge—ecstatic, tactile, strange, revelatory, and unpredictable—taken in the company of friends. Taussig’s note-taking, with its musings, asides, and fresh impressions, combines with his experience on the ground and in full engagement with the situations encountered, to offer a new and dynamic circuitry of critical thought.” * Peggy Ahwesh, experimental filmmaker *“In And the Garden Is You, Taussig takes the essay form, and us, into uncharted territories of immanence and magic, on the way to an exploration of the intricate mysteries of ‘fieldwork, writingwork, and readingwork.’ From fieldwork as a ‘clan secret’ among anthropologists to rumor as a contagion that ‘keeps society running’, and from yagé’s hallucinatory imagery to gardens in the revolutionary setting of Rojava, Taussig continually opens up new lines of inquiry and enchantment.” * David Levi Strauss, author of Photography & Belief *“This essay collection shines with the brilliant insights, surprising prose, theoretical backing band, and laugh-out-loud contrarianism that devoted readers have come to expect from its author. It is needed now more than ever.” * Lucas Bessire, author of Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains *

Michael Taussig is emeritus professor of anthropology at Columbia University. He is the author of several books, including Mastery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown and Palma Africana, both published by the University of Chicago Press.