The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, 30th Anniversary Ed.

315 Pages·2014·4.56 MB·English

by  Michael Taussig

The Devil and Commodity Fetishism
in South America
This page intentionally left blank
THE DEVIL AND
COMMODITY FETISHISM
IN SOUTH AMERICA
Michael T. Taussig
THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
WITH A NEW CHAPTER BY THE AUTHOR
The University of
North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill
© 1980 The University of North Carolina Press
Preface to the Thirtieth Anniversary
Edition © 2010 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book
Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green
Press Initiative since 2003.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the original edition of this book as
follows:
Taussig, Michael T.
The devil and commodity fetishism in South America.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
i. Economic development—Social aspects—Case studies. 2.
Plantations—Colombia—Cauca Valley. 3. Tin mines and mining—
Bolivia. 4. Superstitions—Case studies. I. Title.
HD82.T34 33O.9l8'oo3 79-17685
ISBN 978-0-8078-7133-1 (alk. paper)
"The Sun Gives without Receiving: A Reinterpretation of the Devil
Stories" was originally published as "The Sun Gives without Receiving,"
in Walter Benjamin's Grave (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006),
© 2006 by the University of Chicago Press, all rights reserved, and is
reprinted here by permission.
14 13 12 ii 10 5 4 3 21
To the plantation workers
and miners of South America
This page intentionally left blank
And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence earnest thoui And
Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the
earth, and from walking up and down in it.
Job 2:2
To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it
"the way it really was " (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory
as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materialism
wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears
to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The danger
affects both the content of tradition and its receivers. The same
threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes.
In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition
away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Mes-
siah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of
the Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the
spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the
dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy
has not ceased to be victorious.
Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History"
Thus the ancient conception in which man always appears (in
however narrowly national, religious or political a definition) as
the aim of production, seems very much more exalted than the
modern world, in which production is the aim of man and wealth
the aim of production.
Karl Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface to the Thirtieth Anniversary Edition xi
Preface xv
PART I Fetishism: The Master Trope
1 Fetishism and Dialectical Deconstruction 3
2 The Devil and Commodity Fetishism 13
PART II The Plantations of the Cauca Valley, Colombia
3 Slave Religion and the Rise of the Free Peasantry 41
4 Owners and Fences 70
5 The Devil and the Cosmogenesis of Capitalism 93
6 Pollution, Contradiction, and Salvation 112
7 The Baptism of Money and the Secret of Capital 126
PART III The Bolivian Tin Mines
8 The Devil in the Mines 143
9 The Worship of Nature 155
10 The Problem of Evil 169
11 The Iconography of Nature and Conquest 182
12 The Transformation of Mining and Mining
Mythology 199
13 Peasant Rites of Production 214
14 Mining Magic:
The Mediation of Commodity Fetishism 223
Conclusion 229
The Sun Gives without Receiving:
A Reinterpretation of the Devil Stones 235
Bibliography 267
Index 289