Cultures of Fetishism Read Online Free PDF Page B

opposes and undermines the fetishism strategy.
    The fetishism strategy can, and often does, insinuate itself as a deadly, destructive force that opposes human dialogue, the heartbeat of human exis- tence. Each time a child comes into the world, there is a new opportunity to re-establish and preserve the human dialogue.Yet, it would seem that we live in a world dominated by cultures that would interfere with that dialogue. It is ironic that the vital importance of an infant’s need for human dialogue should be subverted at the very moment in human history when the com- plaints of human detachment and alienation are loudest.
    As we plunge unthinkingly into the very emptiness we fear, something in us continues to resist. For the time being the human dialogue has not been silenced. Even the increasing robotization of human beings illustrated by Reality TV, or the increasing interference with the parent-child dialogue by mechanical devices that, all too often, substitute for human interchanges and human contact, can be combatted and defeated. This battle begins with the ability to detect the fetishism strategy in all its deceptive guises. So, let us begin.

    T w o

    U nr aveling F reud on F etishism

    I begin our explorations of the fetishism strategy with Freud’s six-page paper “Fetishism.” While this book is definitely not about Freud, and does not give much attention to his theory of fetishism, I discovered after many readings of his befuddling paper on sexual fetishism, that it has been infil- trated by the fetishism strategy. Therefore, “Fetishism” turns out to be a demonstration of the differences between fetishism, the perversion, and the fetishism strategy that is the central subject of this book.
    As I began the process of detecting the fetishism strategy in Freud’s paper, I simultaneously began to take in some facts about Freud’s state of mind, dur- ing the two weeks in the summer of 1927 when he was writing “Fetishism.” The state of mind of a person who is suffering can be as much a culture of fetishism as a characteristic of the social order, or a cultural endeavor such as biographical writing, making films, or training psychoanalysts.
    Over the years, I have read and re-read “Fetishism,” a paper whose for- mulations about male and female differences have always troubled me. This time around, though, I was guided by my understanding of the fetishism strategy. I therefore could detect how the fetishism strategy had influenced the tone and quality of these formulations. One principle of the fetishism strategy stood out with a striking intensity. As I will be demonstrating, what was meant to be a contribution to a theory of the erotic life, gradually, but surely, degenerates into a destructive aggression toward the female body. “Fetishism” is an example of the death drive tinting itself in erotic color. Recall the fifth principle of the fetishism strategy where this tint of erotic color can make deadly practices invisible to the naked eye. The erogenous color draws a mask right on the skin.
    The centerpiece of “Fetishism,” situated at its dead center, is Freud’s basic theory that fetishism is based on an aversion to the female genitals. The “absence” of a penis signifies that these genitals must be “castrated.” The fetish, whatever form it takes, represents a substitute penis. However, the sub- stitute penis cannot erase the “horror” of the sight of the castrated female
    genitals. The sight of the female genitals remains as a “ stigma indelible .” 1 The fetish represents “a token of triumph over the threat of castration and a protection against it,” 2 yet, “the horror of castration has set up a memorial to itself in the creation of this substitute.” 3 Thus a fetish reassures but also recalls the horror of castration.
    Finally, in the last paragraph of the third page, as if to hammer in the point, Freud proclaims, “Probably no male human being is spared the fright