The fetish revisited : Marx, Freud, and the gods Black people make /
Since the early-modern encounter between African and European merchants on the Guinea Coast, European social critics have invoked African gods as metaphors for misplaced value and agency, using the term "fetishism" chiefly to assert the irrationality of their fellow Europeans. Yet, as J. L...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Durham, North Carolina :
Duke University Press,
[2018]
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| Summary: | Since the early-modern encounter between African and European merchants on the Guinea Coast, European social critics have invoked African gods as metaphors for misplaced value and agency, using the term "fetishism" chiefly to assert the irrationality of their fellow Europeans. Yet, as J. Lorand Matory demonstrates in The Fetish Revisited, Afro-Atlantic gods have a materially embodied social logic of their own, which is no less rational than the social theories of Marx and Freud. Drawing on thirty-six years of fieldwork in Africa, Europe, and the Americas, Matory casts an Afro-Atlantic eye on European theory to show how Marx's and Freud's conceptions of the fetish both illuminate and misrepresent Africa's human-made gods. |
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| Physical Description: | xx, 362 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of color plates : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781478000754 1478000759 9781478001058 1478001054 |