Palma Africana

It is the contemporary elixir from which all manner of being emerges, the metamorphic sublime, an alchemists dream. So begins Palma Africana, the latest attempt by anthropologist Michael Taussig to make sense of the contemporary moment. But to what elixir does he refer? Palm oil. Saturating everything from potato chips to nail polish, palm oil has made its way into half of the packaged goods in our supermarkets. By 2020, world production will be double what it was in 2000. In Colombia, palm oil plantations are covering over one-time cornucopias of animal, bird, and plant life. Over time, they threaten indigenous livelihoods and give rise to abusive labor conditions and major human rights violations. The list of entwined horrorsclimatic, biological, socialis long. But Taussig takes no comfort in our usual labels: habitat loss, human rights abuses, climate change. The shock of these words has passed; nowadays it is all a blur. Hence, Taussigs keen attention to words and writing throughout this work. He takes cues from precursors ruminations: Roland Barthess suggestion that trees form an alphabet in which the palm tree is the loveliest; William Burroughss retort to critics that for him words are alive like animals and dont like to be kept in pagescut them and the words are let free. Steeped in a lifetime of philosophical and ethnographic exploration, Palma Africana undercuts the banality of the destruction taking place all around us and offers a penetrating vision of the global condition. Richly illustrated and written with experimental verve, this book is Taussigs Tristes Tropiques for the twenty-first century.