


































Metamorphic  sublime,  mimetic  excess,  re-enchantment  of  nature:  the

meltdown as a chronicle of contemporaneity 

Review by Carolina Parreiras

TAUSSIG,  M. 2020.  Mastery  of  non-mastery  in  the  age  of  meltdown,  Chicago:  Chicago

University Press, 220 pp, ISBN 978-0-226-69867-0

Keywords:  Michael  Taussig;  meltdown;  metamorphic  sublime;  mimesis;  mastery  of  non-

mastery

In his most recent book, Mastery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown, Michael Taussig, with
his ingenuity and wit, presents a chronicle of contemporaneity. The main argument of the book is
hinted at  on its  cover.  Illustrated by Olivia Taussig,  the cover invokes the general theme of
Taussig’s analysis: a boy (and his shadow) tries to balance the balls (or are they planets?) which
he juggles, probably in order to avoid the collapse invoked in the title of the book. Just like the
balls in the illustration, our planet is in serious danger of collapsing, victim of a toxic economic
system, fascist politics, and the destruction of the environment. 

In the nineteen chapters that make up the book, Taussig reflects on a world on the brink of
collapse;  a  world  which  is  based  on  a  “new  normal”  marked  by  the  “fantastic  power  of
catastrophe” and the non-existence of the ordinary. Thus, the author reflects on the recent world
context  characterized  by  Donald  Trump (whom Taussig  calls  ironically  “Shaman-in-Chief”),
natural  disasters,  the  Green  New  Deal,  Facebook,  Twitter,  and  the  state  of  technological
surveillance. The description of this context is intertwined with dense theoretical analyses. The
result  of  his  narrative  seems to  have  the  goal  of  creating  what  Taussig  names,  right  at  the
beginning of the text, the “smoke and mirrors game,” in which the mirror represents the mimetic
element, and the smoke the mystery. When the smoke is mixed with reflections on the mirror, a
“metamorphic sublime,” as he calls it, is created.

For readers already familiarized with his work, the return to issues present in previous books will
be noticeable, though reread from the concept that guides the book: the idea of mastery of non-



mastery (MNM). In general terms, mastery of non-mastery refers to the organization of mimesis
as the basis of domination, based on a mimetic excess (“mimicry miming itself”), in which there
is a re-enchantment of nature, which has the peculiarity of being more surreal each time. This
“dark surrealism” will  be the mark of the “new normal,” characterized by strangeness and a
reactive  nature.  In  this  re-enchantment  of  the  world,  the  tropes  of  demystification  and
enlightenment give way to what he calls Art vs Art, based on “new possibilities of thought and
politics, rhetoric and power” (p. 144). The idea is no longer about thinking about ideology vs
truth or discourse vs counter-discourse, but Art vs Art, a paradigm that follows the metamorphic
sublime and is based on “camouflage, montage, collage, ventriloquism and tweetery.” Thus, by
proposing the notion of mastery of non-mastery, Taussig invites us to think about mutuality with
nature, instead of colonization and exploitation of the natural world by man. Mastery of non-
mastery therefore refers to the disorganization of the organization of mimesis (p. 16), a kind of
counter-magic that unrolls layers of paradoxes.

Another striking feature of Taussig's broader work reappears in Mastery of Non-Mastery in the
Age of Meltdown: the powerful and ironic writing that challenges the framing of specific genres
and  that  questions  anthropological  language  itself,  expanding  its  meaning.  The  author  even
points  to  the  fictional  character  of  ethnography  by  evoking  Malinowski  (whom  he  calls  a
performer). Taussig considers the persuasive way in which Malinowski convinces us, through
writing and photographs (that is, mimicking), that he was alone among the Trobriands, creating
the “illusion of authorial presence.” Taussig takes these reflections further by stating that mastery
of non-mastery (MNM) of writing, the central proposal of the book, is a cross between writing
and theater, occupying a space between “science fiction, high theory and weather.” Above all, it
can be said that the book provides a form of writing that questions itself and the capacity for
representation, especially in a context of catastrophe, which escapes simple descriptions. The
meltdown is seen as a force that pushes us to think in a new language – that of transgression,
above all – and in new forms of “response, evocation, and being” (p. 30), in which nature is seen
and felt from an entirely new way.

Taussig maintains another of his characteristics in the book: the dense and meticulous reflection
of  philosophical  and  anthropological  concepts,  intertwined  with  references  from  literature,
cinema, television, and politics. In the book, there are references to Nietzsche, Roland Barthes,
Aby Warburg, Georges Bataille and the Sacred Sociology, Simone Weil, and Michel Foucault,
usual theorists in Taussig's reflections. In this sense, it is worth highlighting the reinterpretation
he makes of Walter Benjamin's thought, though similar efforts appear in his other books, such as
Walter Benjamin ’s Grave (2006) or Palma Africana (2018). His thoughts on the mimetic faculty,
understood  as  the  way  in  which  nature  creates  similarities,  something  remarkable  among
children, but which has been forgotten by Western science, is inspired by Benjamin’s thinking,
specifically the essays "Doctrine of the similar" and "On the mimetic faculty." Taussig proposes
to take the concept of mimetic further, demonstrating how the current moment, encapsulated in
the idea of the metamorphic sublime, is characterized by mirroring and mimetic excess.

Something striking while reading the book is the evocation, in different moments and contexts,
of the figure of the sun. Taussig even questions the extent to which our lives are connected to the
sun and the rhythm of death and resurrection that its movement of rising and setting generates. In
this way, all of us, through our bodily unconscious, are oriented towards the sun without even



being aware of it. It is the sun, through the illusion of a vertical movement – which is actually the
rotation of the Earth – that gives guidance to our daily self. This bodily unconscious knowledge
is what makes our body, the body of the other, and the body of the world gain meaning.

The future seems to be murky; it cannot be described as dawn or twilight, but as something
strange for which we have only just begun to build a representational language. The meltdown,
which results largely from climate change and fascist politics, heightens our awareness of the
body as well as the cosmos, something that becomes palpable when Taussig describes hurricanes
that hit New York and the Bahamas, for example. How to describe the terror, the nightmare, the
catastrophe,  the  unbelievable?  How to  move  past  “representational  inertia”  (p.  32)?  Taussig
seeks the answer to this question by evoking Bataille, who uses the sun as a central figure in his
writings, and reflections by Foucault about Bataille, especially with a focus on transgression.
Thus, Taussig claims a “negation of negation” would be necessary, in which transgression starts
to  be  considered  a  liberating  language.  He  proposes  that  we  think  of  catastrophe  and  the
environmental and political meltdown as phenomena permeated by a sacred and mythical force.
It is exactly there, in this empty representational space, that the mastery of non-mastery appears,
as a basis and hope in a world marked by fear and fascism. Taussig proposes to use terror against
itself, the re-enchantment through an art that evokes life, the adoption of a shamanic curiosity
about the natural world that thinks in “multiple realities” and in a life based on perspective and
error and, finally, the search for an engagement with the body and with the body in the world. In
this sense.  Taussig’s book helps one consider new paths for understanding our contemporary
world and the various forms of violence, dominance and destruction that haunt us. In a way, it is
a call to act and to create a world of mutuality.  

References: 

Taussig, Michael. Walter Benjamin’s Grave. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006. 

Taussig, Michael. Palma Africana. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2018. 

Carolina Parreiras is an anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at the State University of
Campinas, Brazil. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS) at
Columbia University (2019 -2020). The main goal of her current research is to understand the
forms of classification and nomination of public and private forms of violence in favelas, with a
focus on the use of digital platforms and environments, digital violence and digital inequalities.
carolparreiras@gmail.com 

© 2021 Caroline Parreiras

mailto:carolparreiras@gmail.com

