Last revised: 1 October 2002

FETISH * FETISHISM

WORK IN PROGRESS

The idea of a fetish goes back to the seventeenth century (see: Pietz, especially 1,1989) and fetishism has been seen in multiple contexts: ethnography, the history of religion, Marxism, positivist sociology, psychoanalysis, the clinical psychiatry of sexual deviance, modernist aesthetics, anthropology, and Continental philosophy. An historical review of the term and the concepts associated with it can be found in William Pietz's three essays in Res. Apter discusses the parallels between Marx's notion of the structures of the fetish and Freud's construction of fetishes as they function in psychoanalytic discourse. Freud provides the fundamental discussion psychoanalytically.


Bibliography:

Freud, Sigmund. (1928) "Fetishism." vol. 21 in Standard Edition of the Complete
             Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.: 152-157.
            NEW COLLEGE LIBRARY: HF 173 F6263 Vol. 21
            [This is a seminal psychoanalytic discussion of fetishism which claims that a
            fetish both acknowledges and denies the maternal phallus. The fetish acts as a
            substitute for what was not there when the male child first encountered his
            mother's body, the maternal penis. Freud goes on to say that the fetish is a
            substitute for the Mother's penis and wards off the castration that the child
            "saw" and feared for himself when he did not find a penis on the body of his
            mother who must have been castrated.]

______. (1995) Fetishism. Exhibition Catalogue: Brighton, England: 1995.
            NEED FURTHER INFORMATION:

Apter, Emily. (1991) 'Fetishism in Theory: Marx, Freud, Baudrillard." Chapter 1 in
            Feminizing the Fetish: Psychoanalysis and Narrative Obsession in
            Turn-of-the-Century France. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
            1991.
            ch owns--XEROXED COPY

Apter, Emily and William Pietz, eds. (1993) Fetishism as Cultural Discourse. Ithaca
            and New York: Cornell University Press, 1993.
            CH LIBRARY

Bak, Robert C. (1974) "Distortions of the Concept of Fetishism." 191-214,
            Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 29 1974
            USF LIBRARY: BF 721 P75 V.29

Baudrillard. (1981) "Fetishism and Ideology: The Semiological Reduction." 88-101 in
            For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. St Louis: Telos Press,
            1981.
            NEW COLLEGE LIBRARY: HR 801 B357 1981.

Chasseguet-Smirgel, Janine. (1985) Creativity and Perversion, London: Free
            Association Books, 1985. [87, 88]
            Chapter 1. "Perversion and the Universal Law," 1-12.
            Chapter 8. "Reflections on Fetishism," 78-88.
            USF ST. PETERSBURG: HQ 71 .C462 1984

Chasseguet-Smirgel, Janine and Frederick Wyatt eds. (1970) Female Sexuality: New
            Psychoanalytic Views, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970.
            index on file
            Introduction, 1-46.
            NEW COLLEGE LIBRARY: BF 692 .C513

_______. (1953) 'Fetishism. Journal of the American Psychiatric Association 1
            (1953): 285-293. XEROX IN FILE

Foss, Paul. (1986) "Eyes, Fetishism and the Gaze." Art + Text 20 (1986): 24-41.
            XEROX IN FILE

Foster, Hal. (1991) "Amour Fou." October 56 (Spring 1991): 65-97.
            NEW COLLEGE PERIODICALS: NX1 0276

_______. (1986) "L'Amour Faux." Art in America (January 1986): 117-128.
            NEW COLLEGE LIBRARY PERIODICALS: N1 A43

Frost, Elizabeth A. (1994) "Fetishism and Parody in Stein's Tender Buttons." in Sexual
             Artifice: Persons. Images and Politics. Genders 19. Ann Kibbey, Kayann
            Short, and Abouali Farmanfarmajan, eds. New York and London: New York
            University Press, 1994, 64-93.
            LIBRARY: XEROX IN FILE

Gillespie, W.H. (1940) "A Contribution to the Study of Fetishism." International
            Journal of Psychoanalysis 21 (1940): 410415.
            XEROX IN FILE

Greenacre, Phyllis. (1953) "Certain Relationships between Fetishism and Faulty
            Development of the Body Image." Psychoanalytic Study of' the Child 8
            (1953): 79-98.
            USF LIBRARY: BF 721 P75 V.8

________. (1969) "The Fetish and the Transitional Object." Psychoanalytic Study of
            the Child 24 (1969): 144-164.
            XEROX COPY IN CH FILES

Kahn, M. Masud R. (1979) "Fetish as Negation of the Self,' 139-176 in Alienation in
            Perversions, London: the Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis,
            1979.
            AUBURN UNIVERSITY LIRRARY: RC 556 .K49

Kaplan, Louise J. (1991) Female Perversions: The Temptations of Emma Bovary.
            New York: Doubleday, 1991.
            "What is Perversion?," Chapter 1: 7-42.
            "A Memorial to the Threat of Castration, Chapter 2: 43-77.
            "The Female Castration Complex: The Inner Genital World and Separation
            Anxiety, Chapter 3: 78-105.
            "Feminine Stereotypes and the Female Perversions," Chapter 6: 167-200.
            "Masquerades," Chapter 8: 237-283.
            "Feminine, Masculine: The Codes of Perversion," Chapter 14: 485-528.
            USF ST. PETERSBURG: RC 556 .K334 1991

Kokoschka, Oscar. (1925) "Der Fetisch." In Paul Westheim, ed.           
             Kunstlerbekenntnisse. Berlin: Ulistein Verlag, n.d. [1925J.

Krauss, Rosalind. (1985) "Corpus Delecti." 55-112 in L'Amour Fou: Photography
            and Surrealism. New York: Abbeville Press, 1985.
            NEW COLLEGE LIBRARY: TR646. U6 W376 1985

Kuspit, Donald. (1993) 'The Modern Fetish," 149-162, Chapter 12 in Signs of
            Psyche in Modern and Postmodern Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University
            Press, 1993.
            USF LIBRARY: N 72 .P74 K87 1993

Mulvey, L (1993) 'Some Thoughts on Theories of Fetishism in the Context of
            Contemporary Culture," October 65 Summer:3-20.
            NEW COLLEGE LIBRARY PERIODICALS: NX1. 0276

Pietz, William. (1985) "The Problem of the Fetish, I," 9 (Spring 1985): pages not
            clear.
            LIBRARY: TPA
            [In the author's own words: "I argued that the term 'fetish' and 'fetishism' have
            marked a specific problem- idea for modern social theory as it has developed
            since the Enlightenment. Despite the use of this terminology in a variety of
            disciplines that claim no common theoretical ground--ethnography and the
            history of religion, Marxism and positivist sociology, psychoanalysis and the
            clinical psychiatry of sexual deviance, modernist aesthetics and Continental
            philosophy--there is a common configuration of themes among the various
            discourses about fetishism. Four themes consistently inform the idea of the
            fetish: (1) the untranscended materiality of the fetish: 'Matter,' or the material
            object, is viewed as the locus of religious activity or psychic investment; (2) the
            radical historicality of the fetish's origin: rising in a singular event fixing together
            otherwise heterogenous elements, the identity and power of the fetish consists
            of fixation, along with the resultant effect; (3) the dependence of the fetish for
            its meaning and value on a particular order of social relations, which in turn
            reinforces; and (4) the active relation of the fetish object to the living body of
            an individual: a kind of external controlling organ directed by powers outside
            the affected person's will, the fetish represents a subversion of the ideal of the
            autonomously determined self.' ("Fetishism" treats the self as necessarily and in
            essence embodied.")] [Pietz (1987) 23]

Pietz, William. (1987) "The Problem of the Fetish, II," Res 13 (Spring 1987): 23-45.
            LIBRARY: TPA

Pietz, William. (1988) "The Problem of the Fetish, IIIa Res 16 (Autumn 1988):
            105-23.
            LIBRARY: TPA

Schor, Naomi. (1985) "Female Fetishism: The Case of Georges Sand." In The Female
            Body in Western Culture, Susan Rubin Suleiman. Cambridge: Harvard
            University Press, 1985.
            CH LIBRARY

Schor, Naomi. (1993) "Fetishism and its Ironies." in Emily Apter and William Pietz,
            eds. Fetishism as Cultural Discourse. Ithaca and New York: Cornell
            University Press, 1993, 92-100.
            CH LIBRARY

Silverman, Kaja. (1992) "The Female Fetishist," in Chapter 2. "Historical Trauma and
            Male Subjectivity." in Male Subjectivity at the Margins. London and New
            York: Routledge, 1992, 118-121.
            USF ST. PETERSBURG LIBRARY: BF 175.5 .M37 555 1992

Stoller, Robert 3. (1975) Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred, New York:
            Pantheon, 1975. XEROX IN FILE

Weissman, Philip. (1957) "Some Aspects of Sexual Activity in a Fetishist."
            Psychoanalytic Quarterly 26 (1957): 494-507.
            NEW COLLEGE LIBRARY: BF 173 .AZ P7