Working with the image of the Indian shaman as Wild Man, Taussig reveals not the magic of the shaman but that of the politicizing fictions creating the effect of the real.

"This extraordinary book . . . will encourage ever more critical and creative explorations."--Fernando Coronil, I]American Journal of Sociology /I]

"Taussig has brought a formidable collection of data from arcane literary, journalistic, and biographical sources to bear on . . . questions of evil, torture, and politically institutionalized hatred and terror. His intent is laudable, and much of the book is brilliant,...

"I Swear I Saw This" records visionary anthropologist Michael Taussig s reflections on the fieldwork notebooks he kept through forty years of travels in Colombia. Taking as a starting point a drawing he made in Medellin in 2006 as well as its caption, I swear I saw this Taussig considers the fieldwork notebook as a type of modernist literature and the place where writers and other creators first work out the imaginative logic of discovery.Notebooks mix the raw material of observation with reverie, juxtaposed, in Taussig s case, with drawings, watercolors, and newspaper cuttings, which blend...