168 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 34 Number 2 Fall 2018
speak of a simultaneous presence of several temporal
worlds, of being governed by different times—be it the
memory of the home left behind, the void of waiting
and being stuck in a camp, or aiming at “home-ing”
away from home.
The fourth chapter, “Migratory Times,” brings the
experience of time as burden or empowerment to the fore.
What “being in time” may mean for some can also repre-
sent the existential experience of “being out of time,” fixed
in a waiting room, for others. How memories are mediated,
new temporal relations perhaps more cyclical than linear
are woven, is elucidated by references to Hatoum’s Mea-
sures of Distance or The Three Disappearances of Soad
Hosni (2011) by Rania Stephan. An important concept in
this chapter is Deleuze’s (1986) notion of radical imma-
nence in cinema, allowing for different dimensions of time
to emerge, and Bergson’s (1911) “split moment” as a foun-
dation of time. The oscillation between imagination and
actuality as deeply embedded in filmic as well as migrants’
time is delicately discussed by Köhn as he unfolds diverse
filmic and anthropological approaches in their productive
and yet also deeply existential entanglement.
Mediating Mobility ends with a reflection on the
politics, ethics, and aesthetics of representing and con-
templating migration. Drawing upon Ranciere’s (2006)
and Arendt’s (1958) work, it underlines once again the
question of right and recognition so much at the heart of
this reflection on anthropology, migration, and media-
tion. Köhn’s relevant study leaves us with no other ques-
tion but that of the discipline’s future(s), which cannot be
reduced to theorizing but rather must transgress knowl-
edge as world-making, resulting in a world filled with
humanitarian potential. This well-written and important
book is certainly recommended for the classroom, and
beyond.
References
Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition, 2nd ed. Chica-
go: University of Chicago Press.
Bergson, Henri. [1911] 1988. Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy
Margaret Paul, and W. Scott Palmer. New York: Zone Press.
Csordas, Thomas J (ed.). 1994. Embodiment and Experience:
The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1986. Cinema 1: The Movement--Image, trans.
Hugh Tomlinson, and Barbara Habberjam. London: The
Athlone Press.
Jackson, Michael. 2006. Dead Reckoning. Auckland: Auckland
University Press.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space, trans. Donald
Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: Sage Press.
Rancière, Jacques. 2006. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Dis-
tribution of the Sensible, trans. Gabriel Rockhill. New York:
Continuum.
Rouch, Jean. 1955. Les Maitres Fous. Paris: Films de la Ple-
iade. 28min.
Schendel, Willem van. 2002. “Geographies of knowing, geog-
raphies of ignorance: jumping scale in Southeast Asia”. En-
vironment and Planning D: Society and Space 20:647–668.
Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty,
Fashion, and Disease
By Carolyn A. Day. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Alanna McKnight
Ryerson University
Carolyn Day’s examination of the impact of tuberculo-
sis on society, fashion, and class joins the growing body
of literature surrounding dress, scientific discovery,
and health from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries
(Garfield 2018; Matthews-David 2015). Consumptive
Chic explores the idea that “cultural ideas about beauty
intertwined with the disease process of tuberculosis…
[allowed] the ravages of the illness to be presented in
an aesthetically pleasing light” (2). Day draws on an
impressive array of primary medical journals contem-
porary to the time period she covers (mid-eighteenth to
mid-nineteenth centuries), as well as personal journals
of people affected by consumption. This study compris-
es three overarching themes across eight chapters, with
each chapter heavily illustrated. The book also includes
32 pages of color plates, featuring dress, medical instru-
ments, and paintings of romantic-era poets and muses.
In the introduction, Day details the history of tubercu-
losis and chronicles the evolution of the names of the
illness over time. The term consumption was first used
by 1660, as the illness seemed to consume those affect-
ed, though so did many illnesses, and Day explains the
confusion this caused in early diagnosis of illness (3).
The first section, chapters 1–3, provides a medical
history detailing the epidemic and indiscriminate way that
the illness affected every member of society. This section
explores the work of early anatomists and the anatomico-
pathological approach to identifying disease, and the
development of medical science in examining not only
deceased people but also those still living with illness in
an attempt to diagnose and treat. Specifically, the inven-
tion of the stethoscope in 1816 by Theophile Hyacinthe
Laennec gave doctors the ability to percussively listen
Visual Anthropology Review, Vol. 34, Issue 2, pp. 168–169, ISSN 1058-7187, online 1548-7458. © 2018 American Anthropological Association. DOI: 10.1111/var.12168.