What Color is the Sacred?

Description

Playful, enthralling, and whip-smart, Taussig's writing makes ingenious connections between ideas, thinkers, and things. An extended meditation on the mysteries of colour and the fascination they provoke, this book is the next step on his remarkable intellectual path.;Part I: Into the image. The face of world history ; Licensed transgression ; Where stones walk like men ; Color as crime ; Color walks ; The diver ; Could a cat be a whale? ; In the time of lapis lazuli ; Polymorphous magical substance ; Plasma ; A beautiful blue substance flows into me ; The red butterfly -- Part II: Color in the colony. Administration by bluff ; Walking through fire ; Sailing through color ; Body paint ; The instrument of ethnographic observation ; Color and slavery ; Redeeming indigo ; Opiation of the visual field ; Sex appeal of the inorganic -- Part III: Color in Proust. Crossover men ; Techniques of the body : what we falsely call life ; An hour is not merely an hour ; Cardiac fatigue ; What is the color of the profane? -- Part IV: Color in coal. Creature of the lightless depth ; As colors pour from tar ; Colored by weather.