Can I read Beauty and the Beast on EtoBox?

Beauty and the Beast by Michael T. Taussig is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Beauty and the Beast about?

Beauty and the Beast begins with the question: Is beauty destined to end in tragedy? Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Colombia, Michael Taussig scrutinizes the anxious, audacious, and sometimes destructive attempts people make to transform their bodies through cosmetic surgery and liposuction. He balances an examination of surgeries meant to enhance an individual’s beauty with an often overlooked counterpart, surgeries performed—often on high profile criminals—to disguise one’s identity. Situating this globally shared phenomenon within the economic, cultural, and political history of Colombia, Taussig links the country’s long civil war and its bodily mutilation and torture to the beauty industry at large, sketching Colombia as a country whose high aesthetic stakes make it a stage where some of the most important and problematic ideas about the body are played out.Central to Taussig’s examination is George Bataille’s notion of "depense", or “wasting.” While depense is often used as a critique, Taussig also looks at the exuberance such squandering creates and its position as a driving economic force. Depense, he argues, is precisely what these procedures are all about, and the beast

Who reads Beauty and the Beast?

Author

Michael T. Taussig

Publisher

The University of Chicago Press; University of Chicago Press

Published

2012

Language

EN

ISBN

9780226789866

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Anthropology, Science, Home & Lifestyle

Updated

2026-03-24