Fetishism and the social value of objects.

The idea of the fetish has a particular presence in the writings of both Marx and Freud. It implies for these two theorists of the social, a particular form of relation between human beings and objects. In the work of both the idea of the fetish involves attributing properties to objects that they do not 'really' have and that should correctly be recognised as human. While Marx's account of fetishism addresses the exchange-value of commodities at the level of the economic relations of production, it fails to deal in any detail with the use-value or consumption of commodities. In contrast Freud's concept of the fetish as a desired substitute for a suitable sex object explores how objects are desired and consumed. Drawing on both Marx and Freud, Baudrillard breaks with their analyses of fetishism as demonstrating a human relation with unreal objects. He explores the creation of value in objects through the social exchange of sign values, showing how objects are fetishised in ostentation. This paper argues that while Baudrillard breaks with the realism characteristic of Marx's and Freud's analyses of fetishism, he does not go far enough in describing the social and discursive practices in which objects are used and sometimes transformed into fetishes. It is proposed that the fetishisation of objects involves an overdetermination of their social value through a discursive negotiation of the capacities of objects that stimulates fantasy and desire for them

The use of online methodologies in studying paraphilia: a review

Aims: The paper outlines the advantages, disadvantages, and other implications of using the Internet to collect data from those people displaying sexually paraphilic behavior. Method: Using empirical and clinical studies published in the paraphilia literature, the main issues concerning online paraphilic data collection are reviewed and discussed. Results: The specific online data collection methods examined included the collection of paraphilic data via (i) online questionnaires, (ii) online forums, (iii) online interviews, and (iv) online participant observation. Conclusions: It is concluded that there are many useful and practical advantages of using online research methodologies to examine sexually paraphilic behavior

Black Mass

The Black Mass is beginning soon. It is a safe space for women and queer folk alike. Joining the journey that is the Black Mass will take you on an adventure you never thought would become reality and will make you constantly question if it is so. The Black Mass is like rain on a sunny day. It is comfort — It is a sense of togetherness you never knew you needed. Through multi-media I retell stories and ideas based in the occult while unapologetically situating them within the queer and female communities to which they have historically belonged. Letting subjects and themes take their own forms and characters within the coven that is in Black Mass is an important aspect. As more members joined the coven there was an exploration of power and where it lies. Does it belong to me as the artist? Or do I merely capture the conscious insecurities that have been placed away from society as my muses take on the roles given to them? Willingness to give in to something and someone is what makes up Black Mass, from both sides of the camera. These works of art are almost a love letter to myself, and to those who partake in the madness. Within multimedia that I work in, there is always small reoccurring details. Whether it be the choice of colors, usually appearing in the pink range, or small kitschy/childlike decorum, my work consistently pays homage to the interests I thought long forgotten. I also find myself dabbling in the darker side of things, not straying from using death as an aesthetic. It is easy to overlook or ignore such a topic, but it is something that we all face, so why not force a viewer to come to terms with it in a sickly-sweet way. My main subjects include exclusively women as well for the continued hope to further expand the lesbian eye in the art world. Instinctively there is want to create work of my people for my people. I yearn for the safety in numbers and have a fetish for the finite. Everyone may not be able to join in the activities of the Black Mass currently, but it is a sight to see. It is beginning soon.https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/art498/1072/thumbnail.jp

Decapitating Romance: Class, Fetish, and Ideology in Keats’s \u3cem\u3eIsabella\u3c/em\u3e

Critics of Keats\u27s Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil (1818) traditionally focus on the poem\u27s transitional status between the early Endymion and the later and much greater odes. This article reads the poem as a shocking and angry poem by interrogating the meanings of the decapitated head that lies at the core of the text. By interrogating the head I read the work as an expression of Keats\u27s attempt to bury his grief for his parents\u27 deaths, to repudiate his middle-class origins, and to deny his attraction to Romance, the popular Gothic ballad tradition of his day. The text explores Keats\u27s very personal need to elide pain with words, the linguistic conventions of Romance. The fact that he could not bury the body of his pain, the fact that the body comes back to haunt and consume the living-these are the central issues Keats could not resolve in Isabella. The hungry heart one always senses while reading Keats becomes in this poem the mouth that devours, the voice in his own head that would not die, that would not stop repeating the tale of his pain, anger, doubt, and grief

State College Times, March 9, 1933

Volume 21, Issue 82https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartan_daily_1933/1036/thumbnail.jp

State College Times, March 9, 1933

Volume 21, Issue 82https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/12850/thumbnail.jp

State College Times, March 8, 1933

Volume 21, Issue 81https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/12849/thumbnail.jp

Counterparts: Clothing, value and the sites of otherness in Panapompom ethnographic encounters

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Anthropological Forum, 18(1), 17-35, 2008 [copyright Taylor & Francis], available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00664670701858927.Panapompom people living in the western Louisiade Archipelago of Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea, see their clothes as indices of their perceived poverty. ‘Development’ as a valued form of social life appears as images that attach only loosely to the people employing them. They nevertheless hold Panapompom people to account as subjects to a voice and gaze that is located in the imagery they strive to present: their clothes. This predicament strains anthropological approaches to the study of Melanesia that subsist on strict alterity, because native self‐judgments are located ‘at home’ for the ethnographer. In this article, I develop the notion of the counterpart as a means to explore these forms of postcolonial oppression and their implications for the ethnographic encounter

Consumed by the real: A conceptual framework of abjective consumption and its freaky vicissitudes

Purpose – This paper furnishes an inaugural reading of abjective consumption by drawing on Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory of abjection within the wider terrain of consumer cultural research. It offers a conceptual framework that rests on three pillars, viz. irrationality, meaninglessness, dissolution of selfhood. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative research design that adopts a documentary ethnographic approach, by drawing on a corpus of 50 documentary episodes from the TV series “My Strange Addiction” and “Freaky Eaters”. Findings – The findings from this analysis point to different orders of mediatized discourse that are simultaneously operative in different actors’ frames (e.g. moralizing, medical), in Goffman’s terms, yet none of which attains to address the phenomenon of abjective consumption to its fullblown extent. Research limitations/implications – Although some degree of bias is bound to be inherent in the data because of their pre-recorded status, they are particularly useful not in the least because this is a “difficult sample” in qualitative methodological terms. Practical implications – The multi-order dimensionalization of abjective consumption opens up new vistas to marketers in terms of adding novel dimensions to the message structure of their communicative programs, in line with the three Lacanian orders. Social implications – The adoption of a consumer psychoanalytic perspective allows significant others to fully dimensionalize the behavior of abjective consumption subjects, by becoming sensitive to other than symbolic aspects that are endemic in consumer behavior. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the extant consumer cultural research literature by furnishing the novel conceptual framework of abjective consumption, as a further elaboration of my consumer psychoanalytic approach to jouissance consumption, as well as by contrasting this interpretive frame vis-à-vis dominant discursive regimes