Returns of Fetishism
Charles de Brosses and the Afterlives of an Idea
For more than 250 years, Charles de Brosses's term "fetishism" has exerted great influence over our most ambitious thinkers. Used as an alternative to "magic" but nonetheless expressing the material force of magical thought, de Brosses's term has proved indispensable to thinkers as diverse as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Lacan, Baudrillard, and Derrida. With this book, Daniel H. Leonard offers the first fully annotated English translation of the text that started it all: "On the Worship of Fetish Gods", and Rosalind C. Morris offers incisive commentary that helps modern readers better understand it and its legacy. The product of de Brosses's autodidactic curiosity and idiosyncratic theories of language, "On the Worship of Fetish Gods" is an enigmatic text that is often difficult for contemporary audiences to assess. In a thorough introduction to the text, Leonard situates de Brosses's work within the cultural and intellectual milieu of his time. Then, Morris traces the concept of fetishism through its extraordinary permutations as it was picked up and transformed by the fields of philosophy, comparative religion, political economy, psychoanalysis, and anthropology. Ultimately, she breaks new ground, moving into and beyond recent studies by thinkers such as William Pietz, Hartmut Bohme, Alfonso Iacono through illuminating, new discussions on topics ranging from translation issues to Africanity to new materialism.
About the Author
Charles de Brosses (1709-1777) was a noted French thinker who wrote on topics ranging from philology to linguistics to history.
Rosalind C. Morris is professor of anthropology at Columbia University. She is the author of several books, including, most recently, "Accounts and Drawings from Underground" and "That Which is Not Drawn".
Daniel H. Leonard is assistant professor in the Program for Cultures, Civilizations, and Ideas at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.
Reviews
"This work celebrates the long and 'happy productivity' of the concept of fetishism. According to Morris, 'de Brosses bequeathed to us what may be one of the most powerful conceptual operators of comparatavist critique of the modern era'. And it is this that makes de Brosses worth rediscovering today – fetishism stands for the persistence of the irrational in modern rationalism, at once a sign of reason's failure and a symptom of reason's self-delusion" – Christopher Bracken, author of "Magical Criticism: The Recourse of Savage Philosophy"
