Problem of the Fetish

William Pietz is an intellectual historian and political activist. Francesco Pellizzi is the cofounder and editor of RES: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics. Stefanos Geroulanos is professor of history at New York University and the author of several books, including (with Todd Meyers) The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe. Ben Kafka is a psychoanalyst and associate professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University. He is the author of The Demon of Writing.

• Foreword: William Pietz in the 1980sFrancesco PellizziAn Introduction to the Sheer Incommensurable Togetherness of the Living Existence of the Personal Self and the Living Otherness of the Material WorldStefanos Geroulanos and Ben KafkaEditorial Note1. The Problem of the FetishThe Problem of the FetishThe Truth of the FetishThe Historical Field of the Fetish2. The Origin of the FetishFacticius in Christian Theology: Idolatry and SuperstitionFeitiçaria in Christian Law: Witchcraft and MagicFeitiço in Portuguese GuineaFetisso: Origin of the Idea of the Fetish3. Bosman’s Guinea and Enlightenment DiscourseThe Discourse about Fetissos on the Guinea CoastAfrican “Fetish Worship” and Mercantile Ideology4. Charles de Brosses and the Theory of FetishismDe Brosses’s Theory of Fetishism: The Hermeneutic of the Human Sciences and the Problem of MetaphorAnti-universalist HermeneuticsThe Rhetoric of Fetish Worship in the French Enlightenment5. Fetishism and Materialism: The Limits of Theory in MarxThe Semiological Reading of MarxMarx and the Discourse about FetishismReligious Fetishism and Civil Society: The Critique of HegelEconomic Fetishism: Marx on Capital6. The Spirit of Civilization: Blood Sacrifice and Monetary DebtAfrican Fetishism and the Spirit of CivilizationFetishism during the Colonial Conquest and the Problem of Human SacrificeFetishism under Colonial Law and the Problem of Fatal AccidentsDebt, Fetishism, and Sacrifice as Concepts for Comparative Studies7. Death of the Deodand: Accursed Objects and the Money Value of Human LifeThe Unfortunate Death of the Honourable William HuskissonOliver Wendell Holmes on the Problem of the DeodandThe Pious Use Value of Accursed Objects and the Fiscal Body of the Christian SovereignThe Incorporation of Capitalist Debt into the Sovereign BodyThe Abolition of Deodand: The Money Value of Human Life and Immortal Bodies without SovereigntyAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

“Whoever is interested in the material interweaving of concepts as well as in their slow metamorphosis from an uncertain thing – a source of misunderstandings, approximations and clumsy identifications – to a structuring concept of the human and social sciences will find in William Pietz's book not only a rigorously documented history of the term, but also, on the heuristic level, a basis for pursuing the many paths made available to our disciplines attached to the knowledge of the human being in society.”