The History and Theory of Fetishism

Alfonso Maurizio Iacono

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137541147
• eBook ISBN: 9781137541154
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The History and Theory of Fetishism, the expanded version of Iacono's enduring classic Teorie del feticismo and available for the first time in English, aims to provide the historical context necessary to understanding the concept of "fetishism" and offers an overview of the ideologies, prejudices, and critical senses that shaped the Western observer's view of otherness and of his own world. Iacono examines the moment when the Western observer turned his colonizing and evangelizing gaze to continents such as Africa and the Americas, while attempting to simultaneously destabilize and look at his own world critically.

NOTES

Introduction

1. Voltaire Candide and Other Stories, translated by Roger Pearson, Oxford World Classics, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 48.

2. D. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part III, section VIII.

3. D. Hume, The Natural History of Religion, with an Introduction by John M. Robertson, Freethought Publishing Company, London, 1889.

4. E. B. Tylor Primitive Culture (1871), New York, Brentano, 1924, vol. I, p. 477 ff.; S. Freud, Totem and Taboo, translated by A. A. Brill, New York, Moffat,1 918.

5. D. Freedberg The Power of Images, University of Chicago, Chicago, 1989. See also D. Freedberg and V. Gallese, “Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Aesthetic Experience,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 2007, pp. 197–203; V. Gallese and D. Freedberg, “Mirror and Canonical Neurons Are Crucial Elements in Aesthetic Response,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 2007, p. 411.

6. On this see my Paura e meraviglia. Storie filosofiche del XVIII secolo (Fear and Wonder. Philosophical Stories of the Eighteenth Century) Rubbettino, Catanzaro 1998.

7. On the notions of “formal connections” and “perspicuous representation,” see L. Wittgenstein, “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough,” in Philosophical Occasions (1912–1951), edited by J. Klagge and A. Nordmann, Hackett, Indianapolis, 1993. See also L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks, edited by Rush Rhees, translated by Raymond Hargreaves and Roger White, Oxford, Blackwell, 1975. These concepts have also been examined in A. G. Gargani, Wittgenstein. Musica, parola, gesto, Cortina, Milan, 2008, p. 68 ff. and in A. M. Iacono, “Attorno al concetto di rappresentazione perspicua. Spengler e Wittgenstein,” in Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. Saggi in memoria di Sandro Barbera, ETS, Pisa, 2012.

8. K. Marx Capital, I. 4.

9. See J. Lacan Le s éminaire de Jacques Lacan, Livre IV: La relation d’objet (1956–1957), edited by J. A. Miller, Seuil, Paris, 1994. For a detailed discussion of fetishism in the context of the modern world, starting from Marx, Freud, and Lacan, see S. Zizek’s The Plague of Fantasies, Verso, London– New York, 1997. See also Figure del feticismo, a cura di S. Mistura, Einaudi, Turin, 2001; U. Fadini, “Attraverso il feticismo radicale,” Millepiani, no. 21, 2002, pp. 63–77, where Baudrillard’s theorization is also discussed.

10. B. Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, Vintage Books, New York, 2010.

11. Camille Tarot, De Durkheim à Mauss. L’invention du symbolique, La Découverte, Paris, 1999, pp. 507–508. Tarot notices that my Le fétichisme. Histoire d’un concept, PUF, Paris, 1992 does not mention another consideration, besides that of Mauss’s “misunderstanding,” which is quite pithy in itself. Namely that this “misunderstanding” constituted a “necessary mistake” for social sciences. Apart from the fact that Mauss does not explain his claim, as Tarot rightly notes—whatever the meaning he attributed to it may have been—the risk posed by this ambiguous concept of “inevitability” is that it can become a historical justification. In any case, I would distinguish between what is irreversible and what is inevitable.

12. W. Pietz, “The Problem of the Fetish,” Res, no. 9, 1985, pp. 5–17; no. 13, 1987, pp. 23–45; no. 16, 1988, pp. 105–123. See Ch. Antenhofer (ed.), Fetisch als euristiche Kategorie, Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2011 for a recent debate on the notion of fetish.

13. W. Pietz Le f étiche. Généalogie d’un problème, Kargo & L’Éclat, Paris, 2005.

14. B. Latour Petite réflexion sur le culte moderne des dieux faitiches, Synthékabo, Paris, 1996, p. 23 ff.

15. Latour considers the interpretation made both by me and by Pietz to be still inside this illusion.

One The Theoretical and Historical Assumptions Underpinning the Concept of Fetishism

1. See D. Vieira, Grande Diccionario Portuguez ou Thesouro da Lingua Portugueza, edited by Ernesto Chardron and Bartholomeu H. De Moraes, vol. III, Porto, 1873, p. 623. The word “feitiço” is to be found in J. Barros’s 1552 Década I (liv. 3, Chapter 10; liv. 8, Chapter 4, liv. 10, Chapter 1).

2. Ibid. See also V. Valeri, Feticcio, Enciclopedia, vol. VI, Einaudi, Torino 1979, p. 100.

3. Charles de Brosses, Du Culte des Dieux fétiches ou Parallèle de l’ancienne Religion de l’Egypte avec la Religion actuelle de la Nigritie, Genève, 1760. van der Leeuw argues that the term “fetishism” had already been used by G. Carolinus in his 1661 Het hedendaagsche Heidendom of Beschrijving van der Godtienst der Heidenen (a work cited by Balthazar Bekker in The World Bewitch’d where, as we shall see, a comparison is made between practices associated with the “Fetisso” and practices bound to other ancient and modern religions). But van der Leeuw also adds: “It is certain that de Brosses used the word for the first time as a scientific and phenomenological expression. He used fetishism as a general term for the religion of the Negroes. He was also the first to write on the psychological origin of fetishism,” G. van der Leeuw, Phänomenologie der Religion, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 1956 (2nd edition), Religion in Essence and Manifestation, translated by J. E. Turner, Peter Smith, Gloucester (MA), 1967 [1963], 2 vols. with appendices to the Torchbook edition incorporating the additions of the second German edition by Hans H. Penner. As far as the origin ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One The Theoretical and Historical Assumptions Underpinning the Concept of Fetishism
• Two Charles de Brosses’s Theory of Fetishism
• Three The Concept of Fetishism as a Theoretical and Historical Problem
• Four Marx’s Theory of Fetishism
• Five History, Nature, and System: Marx’s Anthropological Conception
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index