Drawing on Jacques Lacan's theory of gaze and Louis Althusser's concept of ideology, this work explores the means by which texts create pleasure and desire. The analyses are developed in the context of a discussion of a wide range of texts drawn from anthropology, literature, art and physics. Building on Homi Bhabha's reading of slave literatures and on screen theory's concept of the cinematic image, Henry Krips offers alternative accounts of fetishism and gaze, which provide radically different perspectives on the complex relations among text, pleasure and desire.