On Fetishism

What comes to your mind when you hear/read that word? Blue Velvet (Freud in his essay "Fetishism" tracks back the use of "fur and velvet" as fetishes to the view of the hair on mons veneris)? Velvet Underground (shiny boots of leather)? Strange objects one can buy in sex-shops? Red shoes (Freud explains, that the curious glance of the boy looking for the female genitals often starts at the feet working its way up the legs)? Underwear? Freud explains that kind of fetishism by ways of contact and by the moment of undressing that reveals what the boy does not want to realise - that women have no penis. Fear of castration leads to fixation on the fetish as a substitute for the female penis. Fear of castration - in other words the fear of being nothing more than a woman with that ridiculous mini-penis called clitoris? That is why fetishes in Freuds opinion often have a form similar to that of the penis (the picture on the upper left shows Freud with a fetish-like object).

There is another sense in which we use the word "fetish". Cars, gadgets and other technical devices (like flat-screen TVs) that some (wo)men seem to have made at least to symbols of what they adore and venerate and strive for.
What does the sexual meaning of the word have in common with its usage in that context of everyday life? Obviously, in both cases unanimated objects are put in the place of (parts of) animated ones. In a way, this seems to be a reversion of what theorists of religion have called "animism", a theory that (from Tylor to Cognitive Science) explains religion as the mechanism of taking unanimated objects for animated ones. Animists then were people that assume animated agents, where there are none. Nietzsche holds, that that is the case in a preeminent way in indo-european languages and their tendency to build subjects of actions where there are only actions. Simply put, he explains why we cannot ask, what the wind is doing, when it is not blowing.

In the case of "fetishism" as related to sexuality, there are at least two steps involved: taking a part of the person(=woman) for the person herself and replacing it by an object related to it (so that the part of the woman being the normal goal of sexual activity is replaced by that very object). In the second case, we talk about people who "bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made" (Isaiah 2,8). Since the publication of Charles de Brosses' (on the upper right) "Du culte des dieux fétiches" in 1760, their has been some tendency in the study of religions to use the term "fetishism" for classifying (at least some of the) "primitive religions". Freud, in his essay on sexual aberrations ("Die sexuellen Abirrungen") introduces the word "fetishism" by noting the similarity of the sexual perversion he writes about with the practice of "uncivilised people" to adore their gods in the form of idols: "Dieser Ersatz wird nicht mit Unrecht mit dem Fetisch verglichen, in dem der Wilde seinen Gott verkörpert sieht".
Interestingly, in West Africa there are civilised people that call themselves fetishists (feticheurs). In Lomé we even find a marché des fétiches, a market of fetishes. The man working as a guide on that market readily explains, that the objects you can buy there are not fetishes. They are the basic elements that are used for medicines and objects that are called "bocio" in the Fon language. Here is a nice collection (photograph taken in 2007-09 in Lomé):

The meaning of bocio is: "the cadaver of the bo", "bo" being a word relating to the power active in the world that can be used to different goals by various practices. For example, the divinator is called bokono, which translates as the master of the knowledge of the bo. Bo is a similar concept to that of the Yorùbá ashé, and would best be labelled as "neutral mystical force" as Dianne Stewart has put it. A bocio as means of protection (a gourd or bottle filled with empowered substances or a carved object to which other objects like parts of animals, strings and the like are attached) does not work by simply being that object. It becomes empowered through ritual treatment, including being heated by saliva, peppers, sacrificial blood and the like. In the case of the talismans that are sold to tourists on the marché des fétiches, they are bespoken by a priest for the customer (using the latter's name), who has to do some simple ritual actions that establish a connection between him and the object.

A protecting medicine (photograph taken in 2008-09 in Benin)

A bocio (not my photograph)

The concept of bocio is somehow similar to that of nkisi (pl.: minkisi) you find among peoples of congolese origin. These objects are used to focus power, f.e. by binding them, driving nails and other metal parts into them or attaching various materials to them. The hole in (the center of) the figure is used to place medicines there. In Berlin, the ethnographic museum has a collection of minkisi worth visting (although the way they are presented is not really apt to do away with European prejudices).

(not my photograph)

As people, who solve the problems of other people - protecting them, healing them, resolving their conflicts with others and the like - the "feticheurs" see themselves as "herbalists, healers and doctors in tradtional medicine":

Now what about bowing down "to the work of their hands"? Freud, as Isaiah, is not talking about traditonal medicine. He is talking about veneration of unanimated objects, taken to be embodiments of the Gods. How do the objects we find on the altars of practitioners embody the gods? First, we have to explain, that this is not the only way the powers of the gods (orisha / vodun) are represented in society. The vodun have their mediums who receive them in possession trance. This is representation by incarnation or personification, as we can see on that clip I shot in Lomé in January 2009, that features a woman possessed by Sakpaté:

Obviously, this is not an unanimated object representing an animated one. It is also not likely to be an action interpreted as that of an animated agent, where there is none, because at least the representing agent is animated, even if there is no represented one. In that case it would be pure connotation without denotation, to put it in a semiotic way. In other words, what is represented, is not something you can translate (make understood) by pointing at it with the finger (= indicate). Although I agree, that people sometimes develop strange theories about things we cannot simply indicate (because they haven't understood the aristotelian distinction between substance and accident), I would not think, that all accidents we cannot simply point our finger at (and that, like all accidents cannot be conceived of as entities) do not exist. I would rather think of some of them (love, hate, will and the like) as the most powerful "agents" active in the world.
Be that as it may, my concluding (although not final) opinion on fetishism is, that the (religious) practices labeled as such deal exactly with the latter powers. The objects looked at as fetishes - a word derived from feitico, the portuguese word for amulets, things made by our own hands - are not incorporations of gods - they are objects focusing the powers of that gods.

Marché des fetiches, Lomé, September 2007

The last picture featured shows a representation of Ogu, vodun of iron, warfare and related forces. Nobody could take this as a representation of the god in an anthropomorphistic way. This is simply a representation of the outcomes of his powers. Ogu is thought to be the primordeal agent possessing that forces - in a way, he is the focussing point of them. This "altar" for Ogu is also a focussing point - metonymical representations of his powers are a place of his/their presence, inasmuch as rituals provide interaction with them. The "fetish" is a representation of forces active in the world in exactly the same sense, that the "god" is - a made-up agent for powers that cannot be thought of as a substance (in the aristotelian sense of the word), but only as something adherent to one. As Judy Rosenthal (in her study of "Possession, Ecstasy & Law in Ewe Vodun", Charlottesville & London 1998) has remarked, the word "fetish" does not hold any pejorative meaning for the practicioners of Ewe Vodun, because they know they make their gods, in contradistinction to men made by their gods (1, 45). In a way, it seems that Freud has also thought of the objects he called "fetishes" as metonymical representations of power, or what he called drive (Trieb), respectively. Not finished, but ending here.

On the Road in Southern Togo

Here are some photographs taken in August 2007 in Togo (mostly from the car) on the journey from Lomé to Kpalime, Atakpame and to Abomey, Benin. I put them together as a slideshow. The roads that looked like bad roads turned out to be quite good ones in retrospect. It was the end of the rainy season, and we took a little road we had found on the map to get to Abomey more quickly- it was a journey of approximately 70 kilometers and took us about 11 hours, driving into ditches and being pushed and pulled out again by some more or less friendly people assembled around the holes in the roads or driving the same road. Two brothers on their Mofa on the way to Abomey were a big help to us, also showing us the way. I do not have any pictures of that night. Although we actually passed the border, we did never come by a border official.

One of the persons in that nearly fully laden van on the last picture yelled at me, whether I was going to make big money by selling the picture I had made in Europe. Well, I did not, obviously.

You will love me for not commenting further on the pictures and for having chosen not to add an audio-track with "African Music".

simon adding wonderbras

As a reaction to the post featured below, Simon did the job of editing the photographs taken and adding the bras. Four Versions; should I do a poll again?

Hopefully, Sabine likes his work

Sabine, Science, Sexism

I know, it should be: Feminism or Gendersomething, but I need a word beginning with "S" here. From time to time the corridors of Vienna University are used for exhibitons, relating to history or some issues of the history of science & scholarship.
When there was such a display of women's success stories in the latter fields, Sabine said to me, she wouldn't give a damn for it as long as they did not remove all those busts in the arcades dedicated to men, men and solely men who were famous professors at VU.
She would much rather drape those busts with bras. Nice idea, I thought. Yesterday, walking the arcades of VU's main building, I saw, that someone had draped the busts: not with bras but with names of more or less neglected women in that field. I took some photographs (poor quality) to post them here.
Although the names of the women are not really readable on those two photographs, I like them for the way the female names "correspond to" the looks of the portrayed men. I wonder how bras would correlate with them.

This one goes out to the one and only Sabine.

His Holiness Joerg Haider

Everybody knows Joerg Haider. At least the taxi driver (another movie) in Washington, DC, who told me, that Mr. Haider had passed away (he didn't pass away, he died in a car-accident), after getting to know that I was Austrian.
Hermann sent me that link (to a German blog):
http://heiligerhaider.wordpress.com/
The blog's authors (anonymously) pretend to be members of an association with one simple and extremely (self-)righteous goal: canonisation of the late Austrian politician. They pray for it! Could be a hoax, a satire or real Carinthian (Austrian) popular religion.

Angelika's Place

For all those interested in the Study of Religions and Cultural Studies, Angelika Rohrbacher has put together a load of links to information one can find on the internet on her homepage

The Doors of Cracow

In case somebody thinks, that I do not appreciate the beauty of Cracow (center of the city), here are some photographs taken in 2007 or so.

There are those beautiful doors in Cracow.

The ones featured here are but a few examples.

To me, it seems to be a kind of variation on a common style, a cultural matrix.

But I do not know enough about the culture (I guess, it has not been done without some Jews involved).

Getting started

So I have decided to become a blogger and to bore the world with my thoughts and reflections. To start, I tell a story about a man from Poland. When I travelled to Cracow this June, in order to teach at Jagiellonian University, he sat in my compartment, unceasingly attempting to start a conversation with me. He did not really understand that I wanted to prepare my course.
When we reached Oswiecim, he gave a deep sigh and asked me whether I knew about this place. I told him I actually did know about Auschwitz. He gave another sigh and spoke about that "catastrophe" it meant.
I uttered some words about the return of anti-semitism in our days and in Poland. He answered, that he knew about it and that he also knew the cause. I became interested. What could be the cause?
His explanation kind of struck me like lightning: in his opinion, the Jews were to blame for it.
Then, in Cracow, the center is packed with "melleks", those little electric cars to carry the tourists from sight to sight. The names of the places are written upon them. It goes like: Wawel - Ghetto - Auschwitz.
The sheet of paper that lay on my breakfast table every morning in the hotel I lived, did not only tell me about the wheather forecast and cultural events but also informed me about the cheapest ways to go to Auschwitz.
Finally, I saw that advertisment of a tourist office next to where I gave my classes. So what would Mr. Finkelstein say, the one who wrote the book "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering".

Two photographs to illustrate; this one from Kazimierz, the former Jewish Quarter (not too many of the former inhabitants left) and as a header the advertisment. Makes me sad, thoroughly sad.