Cultures of Fetishism Read Online Free PDF Page A

physical appearance
    of the stiletto-heeled leg bears an uncanny resemblance to descriptions of the bound feet of ancient Chinese women:

    When the foot is forced to arch like a bow, it gives the illusion of being part of the leg. Thus, with the help of high heeled [lotus] shoes, what remains of the original foot becomes the extension of the erect leg. It is quite similar to the effect created by high-heeled shoes. Those stilt-like shoes and boots with heels as high as five to seven inches raise the body dramatically, creating the illusion of lengthened and thinned legs as well as shortened feet. More important, the raised heel alters the sudden break of the line of the leg, making the body appear taller and straighter, away from the dirt, from gravity. 18

    And it must be said that women are the ones who pass these traditions of foot-binding and stiletto fashions on to their female children. Men may be the foot fetishists who fall in love with these shoes and the leggy legs they adorn. However, it is the women who have an irresistible urge to spend a week’s salary on the purchase of shoes that bind their feet into distorted shapes.
    Are footbinding and the worshipping of foot-crippling shoes the out- comes of being born into a culture of fetishism?
    Since Cultures of Fetishism could be misconstrued as an exploration of the pathology of social communities, I want to insist that a transfer of terminol- ogy from individual psychology to social psychology is not appropriate and is, in fact, misleading. A society cannot have a psychological disorder. A society can, however, encourage and sponsor actions and activities that keep the cit- izens of that social order enslaved to falsehoods and deceptions. Societies do evolve and they construct cultural strategies that serve to perpetuate them- selves. It is characteristic of organized societies that they try to discourage any vitalities and energies that might disrupt or challenge the authority that upholds the social order as it is.
    The cultures of fetishism I am addressing in this book are much like the prepared culture in a petri dish that incubates, nourishes, and breeds bacte- ria, and other living organisms, encouraging them to flourish and proliferate. The only difference—and this difference is crucial,—is that the cultures of fetishism discussed in this book incubate and breed materials that are poten- tially deadly.
    The fetishism strategy aims to silence rebellion and perpetuate conformity. And while there have been other attempts by social critics, philosophers, and psychologists to address the idea of fetishism as a strategic form of cultural discourse, the fundamental premise of most of these writings was to focus attention on the sexual perversion, fetishism. There have been notable excep- tions, however, that manage to get away from the sex manual definitions of fetishism.
    An enlightening example of this more salient approach is Hal Foster’s essay on Dutch still life paintings during the middle of the seventeenth- century. Foster captures exactly the spirit of the cultures of fetishism I will be addressing. Foster discusses the “pronk” 19 ( pronken means to show off)
    paintings that depict lavish displays of objects like long clay pipes, gold chalices, fine porcelain platters, and extravagant food like oysters and crystal goblets filled with dark wine; all coated in a luxurious glaze of shellac that captures and “lubricates” the viewer’s gaze: “Often in Dutch still life, the inert seems animate, the familiar becomes estranged, and the insignificant seems humanly, even preternaturally significant . . . animate and inanimate states are confused, things are consumed by representations, once homey images return as unheimlich (uncanny), a whiff or whisper of death hangs over the scene.” 20
    The fetishistic quality of these pronk paintings are even expressed in their official nomenclature, “still life” ( still leven ), “nature morte.” 21 But,