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"Houses in Motion: The Experience of Place and the Problem of
Belief in Urban Malaysia" is about the transformation of urban
space and the reordering of the demographic character of
Brickfields, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Kuala Lumpur.
Baxstrom offers an ethnographic account of the complex attempts on
the part of the state and the community to reconcile
techno-rational conceptions of law, development, and city planning
with local experiences of place, justice, relatedness, and
possibilities for belief in an aggressively changing world. The
book combines classic methods of anthropological research and an
engagement with the work of theorists such as Gilles Deleuze and
Henri Lefebvre, and moves beyond previous studies of Southeast
Asian cities by linking larger conceptual issues of ethics, belief,
and experience to the concrete trajectories of everyday urban life
in the region.
Benjamin Christensen's Haxan (The Witch, 1922) stands as a singular
film within the history of cinema. Deftly weaving contemporary
scientific analysis and powerfully staged historical scenes of
satanic initiation, confession under torture, possession, and
persecution, Haxan creatively blends spectacle and argument to
provoke a humanist re-evaluation of witchcraft in European history
as well as the contemporary treatment of female "hysterics" and the
mentally ill. In Realizing the Witch, Baxstrom and Meyers show how
Haxan opens a window onto wider debates in the 1920s regarding the
relationship of film to scientific evidence, the evolving study of
religion from historical and anthropological perspectives, and the
complex relations between popular culture, artistic expression, and
concepts in medicine and psychology. Haxan is a film that travels
along the winding path of art and science rather than between the
narrow division of "documentary" and "fiction." Baxstrom and Meyers
reveal how Christensen's attempt to tame the irrationality of "the
witch" risked validating the very "nonsense" that such an effort
sought to master and dispel. Haxan is a notorious, genre-bending,
excessive cinematic account of the witch in early modern Europe.
Realizing the Witch not only illustrates the underrated importance
of the film within the canons of classic cinema, it lays bare the
relation of the invisible to that which we cannot prove but
nevertheless "know" to be there.
Benjamin Christensen's Haxan (The Witch, 1922) stands as a singular
film within the history of cinema. Deftly weaving contemporary
scientific analysis and powerfully staged historical scenes of
satanic initiation, confession under torture, possession, and
persecution, Haxan creatively blends spectacle and argument to
provoke a humanist re-evaluation of witchcraft in European history
as well as the contemporary treatment of female "hysterics" and the
mentally ill. In Realizing the Witch, Baxstrom and Meyers show how
Haxan opens a window onto wider debates in the 1920s regarding the
relationship of film to scientific evidence, the evolving study of
religion from historical and anthropological perspectives, and the
complex relations between popular culture, artistic expression, and
concepts in medicine and psychology. Haxan is a film that travels
along the winding path of art and science rather than between the
narrow division of "documentary" and "fiction." Baxstrom and Meyers
reveal how Christensen's attempt to tame the irrationality of "the
witch" risked validating the very "nonsense" that such an effort
sought to master and dispel. Haxan is a notorious, genre-bending,
excessive cinematic account of the witch in early modern Europe.
Realizing the Witch not only illustrates the underrated importance
of the film within the canons of classic cinema, it lays bare the
relation of the invisible to that which we cannot prove but
nevertheless "know" to be there.
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