This study contends that postmodern American fiction dramatizes an important shift of philosophical perspective on the fetish in keeping with recent theories of fetishism as a cultural practice. This shift is defined by the refusal to accept the traditional Western condemnation of the fetishist as primitive or perverse, and by the effort to affirm more productive uses for fetishism as a theoretical concept spanning the disciplines of psychoanalysis, Marxian social theory, and anthropology. Analyzing the depiction of fetishistic practices in selected contemporary American novels, the dissertation utilizes fetish theory in order to clarify the unique textual and historiographic features of postmodernist fiction. It also emphasizes the way in which conventional ideas about history and teleology are necessarily challenged by an affirmative orientation toward the fetish. Part One of the dissertation, comprising the first two chapters, traces the lineage of Western thinking about fetishism from Hegel, Marx, and Freud to Derrida, Baudrillard, and Jameson, among others. Recognizing that traditional theories attribute the symbolic power of the fetish to its mystification of historical origins, Part One posits that poststructuralist and postmodernist contributions to the subject enable, but do not develop, an alternative concept of fetishism as a practice with constructive historical potential. Part Two of the study seeks to develop this historical potential with reference to prominent descriptive models of postmodernist fiction, and through close readings of five contemporary American authors: Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, Robert Coover, John Hawkes, and Don DeLillo. The four chapters of Part Two each examine the fictional representation of fetishism within a different theoretical framework, focusing on, respectively: temporality and objectivity in postmodern fiction theory; the interrelation between psychoanalytic theory and female fetishism in novels by Pynchon and Acker

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 327-339).

This thesis explores the relationship between capitalism and exploitation in wake of the 2007-08 global financial crisis and subsequent economic recessions among the world’s most advanced capitalist nations. Starting from the position that not enough theoretical work has been done, particularly within criminology, to analyze the harms caused by crises in capitalism, I argue that a structural-Marxist framework can help fill this gap in the literature. By building a theoretical model based on Karl Marx’s original work on crises in capitalism, the structuralism of Louis Althusser, and as the philosophical materialism of David Harvey, I examine the ways in which the global financial crisis is not the unexpected event mainstream narratives maintain, but rather one that has been over a century in the making. On an empirical level, drawing insight from the Greek financial crisis, the model proposed is deployed to analyze the role that international financial institutions have had in the recent crisis and draw a link between these patterns and the status of modern capitalism, suggesting that the economic trauma we face now is intimately linked to the predisposition of capital (re)production and accumulation. This thesis ultimately underlines the fact that while we are governed by this ‘new’, more aggressive capitalism, it is also ‘the same’ in that Marx’s insights regarding the contradictions of capital accumulation are equally applicable today as they were in his time.

abstract: Since their introduction into English in the mid-sixteenth Century, accommodations have registered weighty concepts in religious, economic, and political discourse: they represented the process by which divine principles could be adapted to human understanding, the non-interest property loans that were the bedrock of Christian neighborliness, and a political accord that would satisfy all warring factions. These important ideas, however, give way to misdirection, mutation, and suspicion that can all be traced back to the word accommodation in some way—the word itself suggests ambiguous or shared agency and constitutes a blank form that might be overwritten with questionable values or content. This dissertation examines the semantic range and rhetorical value of the word accommodation, which garnered attention for being a “perfumed term” (Jonson), a “good phrase” (Shakespeare), a stumbling block (Milton), and idolatry (anonymous author). The word itself is acknowledged to have an extra-lingual value, some kind of efficacious appeal or cultural capital that periodically interferes with its meaning. These tendencies align it with different modes of fetishism—idolatry, commodity fetishism, and factishism—which I will explicate and synthesize through an analysis of accommodation’s various careers and explicit commentary evidenced in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2017

Defendemos nesta dissertação que formas radicais de controle de si pela superação do sofrimento físico e das necessidades corporais são respostas subjetivas à configuração do modo de vida social contemporâneo. Modo de vida cujo núcleo está no que autores marxistas chamam de alienação e de fetichismo da mercadoria. Procuraremos examinar o fenômeno que em psiquiatria ganhou o nome de anorexia nervosa ou anorexia mental como uma dessas respostas que, ao mesmo tempo em que renega esse modo de vida, acaba por reafirmar algumas de suas premissas centrais. / We intend to defend that radical forms of self-control by overcoming physical suffering and bodily needs are subjective responses to the contemporary form of life. Form of life which core lies in what Marxist authors call alienation and commodity fetishism. We will seek to examine the phenomena in psychiatry called \"anorexia nervosa\" or \"anorexia mental\" as one of those responses that, at the same time denies this form of life, and, on the other hand, reaffirms some of its central assumptions.

Este trabalho consiste em abordar o conceito de fetichismo da mercadoria, de Karl Marx, presente principalmente na obra O Capital. Ao fazer essa abordagem, a pesquisa encontrou aspectos de certa teoria da ação que estariam presentes na problemática do fetichismo. As relações entre a ação e a representação formam o eixo que permeia toda a pesquisa. Está dividida em três capítulos. No primeiro, se apresenta o fetichismo como um problema que relaciona de modo muito particular a ação e a representação. Para refletir sobre estes aspectos buscamos, nos capítulos seguintes, alguns pontos da teoria da ação de Aristóteles como a responsabilidade moral, a diferença entre práxis e poiêsis, a divisão entre o intelecto prático e o teórico e a figura do acrático. Tais conceitos são articulados de modo que o fetichismo pode ser visto como um problema de uma teoria da ação / This work addresses the concept of commodity fetishism, from Karl Marx\'s book The Capital. By doing this approach, this research has found certain aspects of the theory of action that would be present in the problematic of fetishism. The relationship between action and representation form the axis that permeates all research. It is divided into three chapters. At the first, it presents fetishism as a problem that relates most particularly the action and representation. To think about these aspects we look for, in the following chapters, some points of the action theory of Aristotle as a moral responsibility, the difference between praxis and poiesis, the division between the theoretical and the practical intellect and the figure of akratic. Such concepts are so articulated that fetishism can be seen as a problem of a theory of action

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento CientÃfico e TecnolÃgico / CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel Superior / Investigam-se os conceitos de fetichismo, ideologia e EducaÃÃo em Adorno. Para tanto, este escrito à apoiado na pesquisa teÃrica e bibliogrÃfica, mais especificamente, em torno da obra e das diversas categorias filosÃficas, sociolÃgicas e educacionais do Pensador supracitado, como tambÃm de seus interlocutores e comentadores. Delineiam-se, por essa via, o surgimento e a difusÃo do conceito de fetichismo por diversos autores, tais como Charles de Brosses, Marx, Freud e Adorno, entre outros. EsboÃa-se, em seguida, o ponto de interseÃÃo de Marx com Adorno acerca do fetichismo. Discutem-se, com efeito, o fetichismo na mÃsica erudita e o dualismo entre dois compositores â Schoenberg e Stravinsky â bem como o elemento musical e suas correlaÃÃes com o Fetichismo da Mercadoria Cultural em Adorno, mostrando que a investigaÃÃo acerca da mÃsica constitui um problema importante, que implica a contradiÃÃo para o pensamento adorniano. Pesquisa-se, ademais, o conceito de belo, mostrando, de modo sintÃtico, sua propagaÃÃo no curso da HistÃria da Filosofia, bem como a estÃtica contemporÃnea em Adorno, delineando algumas correntes artÃsticas, seus impactos e propÃsitos. Aponta-se outra apropriaÃÃo de Adorno feita em relaÃÃo ao escritor de O Capital, qual seja, o conceito de ideologia, porÃm, feita de modo divergente, e distinta, comparativamente à compreensÃo de Marx. Analisa-se, alÃm disso, o elo entre Adorno e Benjamin, isto Ã, as convergÃncias e as divergÃncias dos filÃsofos alemÃes a respeito de algumas conceituaÃÃes. Averigua-se, prontamente, o tormento de Auschwitz, mostrando sua origem, consequÃncias sociais e educacionais. Discute-se, outrossim, de que modo a EducaÃÃo pode evitar para que Auschwitz nÃo se repita. Examina-se, a posteriori, a crÃtica feita por Adorno à EducaÃÃo portadora de um carÃter instrumental, tÃcnico e quantitativo. De modo contrÃrio, com base em Adorno, pensa-se uma educaÃÃo nÃo idÃntica à lÃgica vigente, recuperando o aspecto da autonomia e da emancipaÃÃo humana. Reporta-se, por fim, ao conflito entre dois conceitos, no Ãmbito educacional â formaÃÃo e semiformaÃÃo.

This study analyzes how the Art-Union, a British journal interested only in the fine arts, approached photography between 1839 and 1854. It is informed by Karl Marx’s materialism-informed commodity fetishism, Gerry Beegan’s conception of knowingness, Benedict Anderson’s imagined community, and an art critical discourse that was defined by Roger de Piles and Joshua Reynolds. The individual chapters are each sites in which to examine these multiple theoretical approaches to the journal’s and photography’s association in separate, yet sometimes overlapping, periods. One particular focus of this study concerns the method through which the journal viewed photography—as an artistic or scientific enterprise. A second important focus of this study is the commodification of both the journal and photography in Britain. Also, it determines how the journal’s critical engagement with photography fits into the structure and development of a nineteenth-century British social collectivity focused on art and the photographic enterprise.

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