African Origins
Donald L. Donham
Chapter from the book: Donham, D. 2018. The Erotics of History: An Atlantic African Example.
Part of
Chapter from the book: Donham, D. 2018. The Erotics of History: An Atlantic African Example.
In this chapter, the author returns to Pietz’s analysis of the origins of fetishism and traces the way fetishism entered the European imagination as a reading of local Atlantic African practices surrounding religious objects. From the European perspective, these fetishes were a misrecognition of material reality. As such, fetishism came to connote a specific critical stance and consciousness on behalf of the observer. Hence the later usage of the term for commodity fetishism and sexual fetishism.
Donham, D. 2018. African Origins. In: Donham, D, The Erotics of History. California: University of California Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.45.d
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Published on March 9, 2018