[.ca] The Nervous System (ISBN 0415904455)

The Nervous System:
While Michael Taussig's The Nervous System addresses an important, often overlooked issue -- the terrors of social control in the modern world -- his essays are obscure and difficult to read. He is guilty of a stream of consciousness writing style that does not converge to make a coherent argument. This reader wanted to learn more about the political chaos of Latin American nations, but instead got an eyeful of the author's images and musings that were not directly linked to the main thesis. Suprisingly, the book's most moving parts are the anecdotes that informs thte reader that terror exists in the United States, in supposedly civlized areas. For while we may dismiss genocide and political disappearances in other countries, how can we justify the economic and social oppression, and elimnation, of American blacks? This book get two stars for covering a sensitive topic, but when it comes to readablity, gets a zero (unless you like Walter Benjamin and the postmodernist, unfocused style).

Brilliantly insightful:
One of the finest works in any discipline on the workings of terror.