The Fetish Revisited: Marx, Freud, and the Gods Black People Make

J. Lorand Matory

Published by Duke University Press 2018

The Fetish Revisited

Marx, Freud, and the Gods Black People Make

J. Lorand Matory

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478002437

Overview
Contents

About this book

J. Lorand Matory casts an Afro-Atlantic eye on European social theory to show how Marx's and Freud's conceptions of the fetish illuminate and misrepresent the nature of Africa’s gods while demonstrating that Afro-Atlantic gods have their own social logic that is no less rational than European social theories.

Author / Editor information

J. Lorand Matory is Lawrence Richardson Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Director of the Sacred Arts of the Black Atlantic Project at Duke University. He is the author of Stigma and Culture: Last-Place Anxiety in Black America; Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé; and Sex and the Empire That Is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion.

Reviews

"J. L. Matory provides a critical and provocative account of how the concept of the fetish has been appropriated and used as a key concept in the writings of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. The work is especially strong in demonstrating the fantastical appropriations of the idea of the fetish, plucked from the complex and rich contexts of meaning and agency in transatlantic black religion. . . . . A fascinating, readable, and wandering book. . . . Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty."

-- G. E. Marcus Choice

"Matory’s The Fetish Revisited is a masterful work, stunning in its erudition, ambitious argument, and prodigious ethnographic detail."

-- Laura S. Grillo Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"The Fetish Revisited is an important book and a pleasure to read."

-- Steven Engler Studies in Religion

"... [Matory] offers important insights into the Afro-Atlantic origins and makings of fetishes and into the unequal relations they comprise. One of the great merits of this book is that it takes Afro-Atlantic things, practices, and voices as theory and not merely as something to be described and analyzed."

-- Benedikt Pontzen Anthropos

"Matory's The Fetish Revisited is a well-researched and provocative work that combines academic research with a deep intellectual reflection in a work mainly directed to the disciples of Freud and Marx, but amazingly insightful into the fields of religious studies, anthropology, ethnology and meta-theory."

-- Cyril-Mary Pius Olatunji and Fracis Kayode Fabidun Marx and Philosophy Review of Books

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
A NOTE ON ORTHOGRAPHY Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
PREFACE Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
INTRODUCTION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I. THE FACTORY, THE COAT, THE PIANO, AND THE “NEGRO SLAVE”
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	42
CHAPTER ONE: The Afro-Atlantic Context of Historical Materialism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
CHAPTER TWO: The “Negro Slave” in Marx’s Labor Theory of Value Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	60
CHAPTER THREE: Marx’s Fetishization of People and Things Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	78
Conclusion to Part I Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
PART II: THE ACROPOLIS, THE COUCH, THE FUR HAT, AND THE “SAVAGE”
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	98
CHAPTER FOUR: The Fetishes That Assimilated Jewish Men Make Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
CHAPTER FIVE: The Fetish as an Architecture of Solidarity and Conflict Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
CHAPTER SIX: The Castrator and the Castrated in the Fetishes of Psychoanalysis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Conclusion to Part II Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165
PART III: POTS, PACKETS, BEADS, AND FOREIGNERS
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	172
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Contrary Ontologies of Two Revolutions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
CHAPTER EIGHT: Commodities and Gods Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
CHAPTER NINE: The Madeness of Gods and Other People Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
Conclusion to Part III Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	285
CONCLUSION: ESHU’S HAT, OR AN AFRO-ATLANTIC THEORY OF THEORY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	289
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	325
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	331
REFERENCES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	339
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	349
Plates Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	365

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 384
Illustrations
- Other: 51 photographs, incl. 9 in color

eBook

Published: October 4, 2018
ISBN: 9781478002437