Corpse Magic examines beliefs about vengeance the slain magically enact on their killers, focusing on lethal violence in Colombia and the United States.

Corpse Magic is a response to the global ubiquity of violence. In this bracing new work, the influential anthropologist Michael Taussig puts killings in Colombia, by gangs and guerrillas, police and the military, and agents of agribusiness, in conversation with mass shootings and police killings, disproportionately of Black people, in the United States. In both contexts, he examines the effects of violent killing on its victims, its perpetrators, and those who witness and relive it through media footage.

Drawing from literature, religion, philosophy, and anthropology, Taussig traces the idea that the act of killing “infects” the killer and spreads outward,  then connects this concept of contagion to beliefs in Colombia and elsewhere that the souls of the slain possess those of their slayers and that magic can be used to empower or thwart corpses as agents of vengeance. In this powerful and imaginative work, Taussig asks what kind of power the dead continue to have; what kinds of magic can manage that power; and what, if anything, can stop seemingly endless cycles of violence.
 

"“This is pure Taussig. In his latest, he ruminates and loops through the vicissitudes of corpse magic and the many forms it takes in Colombia and beyond—a subject as important and underexplored as it is uncanny.”" - Alexander L. Fattal, author of Guerrilla Marketing: Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia

"“An engaging and engrossing book. Taussig’s style of reading is a model for everyday cultural literacy.”" - Christopher Bracken, author of Magical Criticism: The Recourse of Savage Philosophy