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74373-01 - Research seminar: The Fetish: Pleasure, Power, Profit (3 CP)
| Semester | spring semester 2025 |
| Course frequency | Irregular |
| Lecturers | George-Paul Meiu (gp.meiu@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | “Fetish” and “fetishism” have offered anthropologists, psychoanalysts, historians, and other scholars an important conceptual language to tackle the dynamics of capitalism, governance, coloniality, and modernity. From Karl Marx’s “commodity fetishism” and Sigmund Freud’s “sexual fetishism” to various anthropological studies of fetishism as religious practice, the idea of the fetish has been central to social theory. The fetish has referred alternatively to how our ideas of objects erase the histories of their production; how our disavowed or discarded sources of desire generate new erotic pleasure; or how things animated by spirits shape our social action in unexpected ways. More recently, postcolonial critiques have emphasized how the concrete objects and fantasies previously dismissed as “fetishes” (i.e., false consciousness)—masks, icons, representations—can represent important starting points for imagining and understanding the world at large. Emphasizing the interconnectivity of different global regions, cultures, or social classes and the tensions and ambiguities that such interconnectivity inevitably generates, the fetish may help us better understand various social phenomena. These include, for example, the branding, advertising, and consumption of commodities; the rising charismatic figures animating new forms of populism and ethno-nationalism; civil society’s political mobilizations through the removal or destruction of icons (i.e., iconoclasm); myriad forms of self-making, sexuality, and erotic expression; as well as processes of racialization, ethnicization, and cultural differentiation. Through a close reading of key texts and theorists, this seminar asks: What can the concept “fetish” offer us by way of better understanding the world in which we live? And how can reimagine fetishism from contemporary social, political, and economic conundrums? |
| Bibliography | Readings include, among other things, selections from the following books: Matory, Lorand. 2018. The Fetish Revisited: Marx, Freud, and the Gods Black People Make. Durham: Duke University Press. McClintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge. McGovern, Mike. 2013. Unmasking the State: Making Guinea Modern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Morris, Rosalind C. Daniel H. Leonard. 2017. The Returns of Fetishism: Charles de Brosses and the Afterlives of an Idea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pietz, William. 2022. The Problem of the Fetish. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Tonda, Joseph. 2020. Modern Sovereign: The Body of Power in Central Africa (Congo and Gabon). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. |
| Admission requirements | The number of participants is limited to 25 students. The places are assigned according to date of enrollment and subject of study. Priority will be given to the subjects listed under "modules". |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| wöchentlich | Monday | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
Dates
| Date | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Monday 24.02.2025 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 03.03.2025 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 10.03.2025 | 16.15-18.00 | Fasnachstferien |
| Monday 17.03.2025 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 24.03.2025 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 31.03.2025 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 07.04.2025 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 14.04.2025 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 21.04.2025 | 16.15-18.00 | Ostern |
| Monday 28.04.2025 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 05.05.2025 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 12.05.2025 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 19.05.2025 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 26.05.2025 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Modules |
Modul: Kulturtechnische Dimensionen (Master's degree program: Cultural Techniques) Modul: Research Skills in Social and Cultural Anthropology (Master's degree subject: Anthropology) Module: Fields: Media and Imagination (Master's degree program: African Studies) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment details | Attendance and Participation (20%) Weekly Discussion Questions (20%) In-class Presentation on the Readings (30%) Book Review (written assignment) (30%) |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | as often as necessary |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Ethnologie |