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Fetishism as Cultural Discourse, Emily Apter and William Pietz, eds. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. 393 pages. $49.95 cloth. $19.95 paper.
Reviewed by DlANE CARSON
As co-editors Emily Apter and William Pietz directly and succinctly state in their preface to Fetishism as Cultural Discourse, in recent years an interdisciplinary array of scholars has analyzed the reasons "modern cultures have at times explained and justified themselves as mature, sane, civilized, and rational in terms of an absence of 'fetishism' " (ix). Meantime, artists, working in various media, have explored and exploited (my interpretation) precisely the cultural nerves we attempt to disavow. With an exemplary selection of fifteen essays (nine new and six reprinted) exploring the complexity and history of this topic, Apter and Pietz organize their anthology into three sections: "EngenderingFetishism" (six essays), "Magic Capital" (four essays), and "Scopic Fixations" (five essays). This grouping brings "into thematic focus three sites of controversy: the historical construction of gender identity; the social life of capital; and lived ideologies in visual culture" (ix).
This categorizing offers a useful division, especially since the choices within each section encompass a wide range of issues and ideas from Robert A. Nye's "The Medical Origins of Sexual Fetishism" to Elizabeth Grosz's "Lesbian Fetishism?" in part one, from William Pietz's "Fetishism and Materialism: The Limits of Theory in Marx" to Michael Taussig's "Maleficium: State Fetishism" in part two, and from Hal Foster's "The Art of Fetishism: Notes on Dutch Still Life" to "The Smell of Money: Mary Kelly in Conversation with Emily Apter" in part three. The strength of each work is enhanced, in part, by a constructive, albeit implicit dialogue about related concerns both within each section and across the anthology. Moreover, in several instances, a complementary approach by authors furthers inquiry into, for example, the possibility of female fetishists. At other times, an equally fruitful divergence of views enlivens consideration of an issue. For example, Charles Bernheimer's remarkable reinterpretation of the castration complex productively recasts Elizabeth Grosz's "Lesbian Fetishism?" by taking the question off on a different tangent. Similarly, in part two, the varied perspectives on commodity fetishism suggest further, rich veins to mine. This synergistic interaction is one of the benefits of such a well-designed compilation of articles. Let me...