What Color Is the Sacred? by Michael T. Taussig
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I recall that when this book came out, it was highly acclaimed. There was much discussion. But it doesn’t seem particularly startling to me. Much of the “color” of the book comes from vivid phrasing and verbose literary remarks. The author certainly cares about his subject matter but doesn’t care to pigeon-hole it into a tightly composed theory. He doesn’t extract much in the way of making sense. He is more concerned with presenting a roundabout exploration of the topic. I gleamed more from his collection of notes than from anything much else he said.
I did find it an interesting contrast with Guy Deutscher’s Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages in that Guy was more interested in what makes color: its meaning and sensation than an exploration of what other people have said about it. Deutscher is able to pull through an interesting observation that the experience of color is tied very strongly to its linguistic difference… which originates from a discovery of the technological production of that color. Taussig sort of talks about that, but doesn’t really make much in the way of any “point”. He just vacillates around and presents flair in place of any firm discussion.
I found it ironic that his “polymorphous magical substance” as an alternate term for color separates it from the object of coloring — marking him in his category as that eurocentric class that would place color as being exterior to objects they color, but then again, I could be overanalysing, trying to make something of his book… since he wrote so many pages talking about not much of anything.
If you are interested in a colorful summation of other writers, I think this book would be for you.
