Corpse Magic

Corpse Magic examines beliefs about the vengeance the slain can magically enact on their killers, focusing on lethal violence in Colombia and the US.

Corpse Magic is a response to the ubiquity of violence across the world. In this bracing, new work, the influential anthropologist Michael Taussig puts state-sanctioned violence in Colombia related to gangs, guerrilla warfare, and police action in conversation with violence in the United States, especially mass shootings and the killing of Black Americans by the police. In both contexts, Taussig examines the effects of violence on its victims, its perpetrators, and those who witness and relive it through media footage.

Taussig analyzes the haunting idea that the act of killing “infects” the killer and spreads outward, connecting it to a belief in Colombia (and elsewhere) that the souls of the slain possess those of their slayers and that magic must be used on corpses to circumvent this process. Drawing from literature, religion, philosophy, and anthropology, Taussig examines violence as a form of contagion that inhabits the killer and the killed alike. In this powerful and imaginative work, he asks what kind of power the dead continue to have; what kind of magic can enact vengeance; and what, if anything, can stop seemingly endless cycles of violence.