Description
Book SynopsisIn
Art Effects Brazilian anthropologist Carlos Fausto explores the agency of Indigenous artifacts and images in order to offer a new understanding of the pragmatics and ontology of ritual contexts.
Trade Review“[
Art Effects] opens enormous comparative possibilities and understanding of other South American areas, helping us to unravel ethnological complexes and features of great breadth. . . . [It] constitutes a solid step in the forging of that comparative dialogue between Amerindian peoples of the vast South America that we so badly need.”—Juan Javier Rivera Andia,
Anthropos“The ethnographic depth and analytical richness of Fausto’s
Art Effects are remarkable. The book takes the reader on a fascinating journey through processes of image- and artifact-making among a number of Lowland South American societies.”—Paolo Fortis,
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory“This is the book we have been waiting for. If perspectivism and the ontological turn brought Amazonia in from the cold to enter mainstream anthropology, Fausto’s
Art Effects moves the debate forward. . . . Fausto takes us beyond philosophizing and back to the real-life world of masks, musical instruments, and painted images at the heart of Amerindian culture.”—Stephen Hugh-Jones, author of
The Palm and the Pleiades: Initiation and Cosmology in Northwest Amazonia“A liberating text for all those seeking to escape the anthropomorphic bias of image theory. Carlos Fausto’s immersion in two different Amazonian societies allows him to upend some of the reigning models of figuration, mimesis, and presence. Critically engaged, his writing is lucid and engaging.”—Z. S. Strother, author of I
nventing Masks: Agency and History in the Art of the Central Pende“[An] enriching and thought-provoking book. . . . Fausto establishes a constant dialogue between the interpretation of ethnography and the current debates in social anthropology, art history, aesthetics, and philosophy. A great achievement.”—Carlo Severi, author of
The Chimera Principle: An Anthropology of Memory and ImaginationTable of ContentsList of Illustrations
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Orthographic Conventions
Introduction: The Smirk
1. Body-Artifact
2. Wild Mysteries
3. Whirlwinds of Images
4. The Pronominal Effigy
5. A Chief’s Two Bodies
Conclusion: Masters of Deceit
Source Acknowledgments
Notes
Works Cited
Index
