Michael Taussig

It is strange, is it not, that something so intensely spirited and spiritual as communicating with God should be so tied to the flesh and, at the very same time, be so tied to covering it, uncovering it, and even mutilating it?

We therefore need to dwell upon this corrosive power creeping along the otherwise imperceptible fault lines in the sturdy structure of language and thought, splicing games and deceit to matters of life and death, theater to reality, this world to the spirit world, and trickery to the illusion of a world without trickery—the most problematic trick of all.