Beauty and the Beast
2012年7月 · University of Chicago Press
4.0star
3条评价report
电子书
184
页
family_home
符合条件
info
report评分和评价未经验证 了解详情
关于此电子书
The celebrated anthropologist and author of The Corn Wolf examines the Colombian culture of plastic surgery and its surprising relationship to violence.
Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Colombia, Michael Taussig scrutinizes the audacious and sometimes destructive attempts people make to transform their bodies through cosmetic surgery and liposuction. He balances an examination of surgeries meant to enhance an individual’s beauty with their often-overlooked counterparts, surgeries performed—often on high profile criminals—to disguise one’s identity. Exploring this global phenomenon through Colombia’s economic, cultural, and political history, Taussig links the country’s long civil war and history of torture to the beauty industry at large, sketching Colombia as a country whose high aesthetic stakes make it a staging ground for some of the most important and problematic ideas about the body.
Central to Taussig’s examination is George Bataille’s notion of depense, or “wasting.” While depense is often used as a critique, Taussig also looks at its position as a driving economic force. Depense, he argues, is precisely what these procedures are about, and the beast on the other side of beauty should not be dismissed as simple recompense. At once theoretical and colloquial, public and intimate, Beauty and the Beast is a true-to-place ethnography that tells a layered story about the lengths to which people will go to be physically remade.
Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Colombia, Michael Taussig scrutinizes the audacious and sometimes destructive attempts people make to transform their bodies through cosmetic surgery and liposuction. He balances an examination of surgeries meant to enhance an individual’s beauty with their often-overlooked counterparts, surgeries performed—often on high profile criminals—to disguise one’s identity. Exploring this global phenomenon through Colombia’s economic, cultural, and political history, Taussig links the country’s long civil war and history of torture to the beauty industry at large, sketching Colombia as a country whose high aesthetic stakes make it a staging ground for some of the most important and problematic ideas about the body.
Central to Taussig’s examination is George Bataille’s notion of depense, or “wasting.” While depense is often used as a critique, Taussig also looks at its position as a driving economic force. Depense, he argues, is precisely what these procedures are about, and the beast on the other side of beauty should not be dismissed as simple recompense. At once theoretical and colloquial, public and intimate, Beauty and the Beast is a true-to-place ethnography that tells a layered story about the lengths to which people will go to be physically remade.
评分和评价
4.0
3条评价
作者简介
Michael Taussig is the Class of 1933 Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. He is the author of many books, includingI Swear I Saw This, Walter Benjamin’s Grave, and My Cocaine Museum, all published by the University of Chicago Press.
为此电子书评分
欢迎向我们提供反馈意见。
如何阅读
智能手机和平板电脑
笔记本电脑和台式机
您可以使用计算机的网络浏览器聆听您在 Google Play 购买的有声读物。
电子阅读器和其他设备
如果要在 Kobo 电子阅读器等电子墨水屏设备上阅读，您需要下载一个文件，并将其传输到相应设备上。若要将文件传输到受支持的电子阅读器上，请按帮助中心内的详细说明操作。
