The Problem of the Fetish - Softcover

Pietz, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226821811 ISBN 13: 9780226821818

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2022

Synopsis

A groundbreaking account of the origins and history of the idea of fetishism.

In recent decades, William Pietz’s innovative history of the idea of the fetish has become a cult classic. Gathered here, for the first time, is his complete series of essays on fetishism, supplemented by three texts on Marx, blood sacrifice, and the money value of human life. Tracing the idea of the fetish from its origins in the Portuguese colonization of West Africa to its place in Enlightenment thought and beyond, Pietz reveals the violent emergence of a foundational concept for modern theories of value, belief, desire, and difference. This book cements Pietz’s legacy of engaging questions about material culture, object agency, merchant capitalism, and spiritual power, and introduces a powerful theorist to a new generation of thinkers.

About this title

About the Authors

William Pietz is an intellectual historian and political activist.

Francesco Pellizzi (1940-2023) was the cofounder and editor of RES: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics. He was also a coeditor of The Problem of the Fetish.

Stefanos Geroulanos is professor of history at New York University. He is the author of Transparency in Postwar France and coauthor of The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe, published by the University of Chicago Press.

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226821811
• ISBN 13: 9780226821818
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 266
• Editor: Pellizzi Francesco, Geroulanos Stefanos, Kafka Ben