bar (print) issn 2057–5823 bar (online) issn 2057–5831 bar vol 1.1 2017 119–124 ©2017, equinox publishing doi: https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.33963 Body and Religion Review Giving Life, Giving Death: Psychoanalysis, Anthropology, Philosophy By L. Scubla. Translated by M. B. DeBevoise (2016) East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 367pp. Reviewed by Duncan Reyburn Lucien Scubla’s contribution to Michigan State University Press’ Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture series is so rich, deep, and multifaceted that every page of it deserves a review of its own. It is a carefully situated, detailed, uncompromising book that questions the theoretical residue of Sigmund Freud’s famous but contentious Totem and Taboo (1913) – a work published a little over a century ago as an attempt to bridge psychoanalysis and anthropology. Of course, Totem and Taboo has been almost universally discredited by anthropologists because of its reliance on a range of empirically invalid hypotheses. However, Scubla follows René Girard’s interest in continuing the discourse between anthropology and psychoanalysis in the context of mimetic theory, as well as Girard’s observation (p. 237) that, though it is certainly riddled with inaccuracies and awkward prejudices, Totem and Taboo nevertheless has something of value to say to us today. In the process, following Girard’s contentions on the relationship between reli- gion and culture, Scubla raises important questions here regarding the role of the body in the religious/ritual origin of social organisation. However, to be clear, the body is understood in this work as a key for answering larger anthropological issues and therefore may not, for readers of this journal, be enough of an explicit focus. at said, as the following outline should show, it would be difficult to argue that the body is merely peripheral to Scubla’s work. Affiliation University of Pretoria, South Africa. email: duncan.reyburn@up.ac.za