CiNii Books - The problem of the fetish

A groundbreaking account of the origins and history of the idea of fetishism. In recent decades, William Pietz's innovative history of the idea of the fetish has become a cult classic. Gathered here, for the first time, is his complete series of essays on fetishism, supplemented by three texts on Marx, blood sacrifice, and the money value of human life. Tracing the idea of the fetish from its origins in the Portuguese colonization of West Africa to its place in Enlightenment thought and beyond, Pietz reveals the violent emergence of a foundational concept for modern theories of value, belief, desire, and difference. This book cements Pietz's legacy of engaging questions about material culture, object agency, merchant capitalism, and spiritual power, and introduces a powerful theorist to a new generation of thinkers.

Table of Contents

Foreword: William Pietz in the 1980s Francesco Pellizzi An Introduction to the Sheer Incommensurable Togetherness of the Living Existence of the Personal Self and the Living Otherness of the Material World Stefanos Geroulanos and Ben Kafka Editorial Note 1. The Problem of the Fetish The Problem of the Fetish The Truth of the Fetish The Historical Field of the Fetish 2. The Origin of the Fetish Facticius in Christian Theology: Idolatry and Superstition Feiticaria in Christian Law: Witchcraft and Magic Feitico in Portuguese Guinea Fetisso: Origin of the Idea of the Fetish 3. Bosman's Guinea and Enlightenment Discourse The Discourse about Fetissos on the Guinea Coast African "Fetish Worship" and Mercantile Ideology 4. Charles de Brosses and the Theory of Fetishism De Brosses's Theory of Fetishism: The Hermeneutic of the Human Sciences and the Problem of Metaphor Anti-universalist Hermeneutics The Rhetoric of Fetish Worship in the French Enlightenment 5. Fetishism and Materialism: The Limits of Theory in Marx The Semiological Reading of Marx Marx and the Discourse about Fetishism Religious Fetishism and Civil Society: The Critique of Hegel Economic Fetishism: Marx on Capital 6. The Spirit of Civilization: Blood Sacrifice and Monetary Debt African Fetishism and the Spirit of Civilization Fetishism during the Colonial Conquest and the Problem of Human Sacrifice Fetishism under Colonial Law and the Problem of Fatal Accidents Debt, Fetishism, and Sacrifice as Concepts for Comparative Studies 7. Death of the Deodand: Accursed Objects and the Money Value of Human Life The Unfortunate Death of the Honourable William Huskisson Oliver Wendell Holmes on the Problem of the Deodand The Pious Use Value of Accursed Objects and the Fiscal Body of the Christian Sovereign The Incorporation of Capitalist Debt into the Sovereign Body The Abolition of Deodand: The Money Value of Human Life and Immortal Bodies without Sovereignty Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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The problem of the fetish

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