Fetish
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"World exhibitions were places of pilgrimage to the fetish commodity." --Arcades Project (1927 - 1940) by Walter Benjamin "If the commodity was a fetish, then Grandville was the tribal sorcerer." --Arcades Project (1927 - 1940) by Walter Benjamin |
Illustration: Triumph of Christianity (detail) by Tommaso Laureti (1530-1602.)
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A fetish denotes something which is believed to possess, contain, or cause spiritual or magical powers; an amulet or a talisman. This meaning was popularized in anthropology by Charles de Brosses's Du culte des dieux fétiches (1760). Since the late 19th century, most notably in Le fétichisme dans l'amour (1887) by Alfred Binet, the term started to refer to something sexual desire provoked by nonsexual objects or body parts. In common parlance, a fetish refers to an irrational, or abnormal fixation or preoccupation.
Fetish may refer to:
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Anthropological uses
- Fetishism, the attribution of religious or mystical qualities to inanimate objects, known as fetishes
Sexual
- Sexual fetishism, a sexual attraction to objects or body parts of lesser sexual importance (or none at all) such as feet, toes or certain types of clothing
- Fetish subculture, a social movement constructed around sexual fetishism
- Fetish magazine, a type of erotic magazine
- Fetish art
- Fetish fashion
Arts
- The Great Fetish, a science fiction novel by L. Sprague de Camp
Business
- Commodity fetishism, a Marxist concept of valuation in capitalist markets
- Growth Fetish, a 2003 book by Clive Hamilton advocating a zero-growth economy among "developed" nations
Etymology
From French fétiche, from Portuguese feitiço, from Latin factīcius (“artificial” and facere, "to make").
