Overview

At the dawn of the new millennium, Western culture is marked by various fantasies that imagine our future selves and their forms of embodiment. These fantasies are part of a rapidly growing cultural discourse about the future of the human body; the ever more illusive boundary between the human, the animal, and the technological; and the cultural consequences of greater human-technological integration. Amanda Fernbach argues that classic fetishism, as outlined by Sigmund Freud, never has been up to the task of explaining all cultural fetishisms. Exploring decadent, magical, matrix, and immortality fetishism, she shows how fetishism in all of its modes is an important conceptual tool for contesting postmodern malaise and for providing utopian tools for a post-human existence. Examining a wide range of texts and scenes, she argues that we should examine the new forms of fetishism emerging from the fringes of the pop culture scene in order to understand their complexities as they move into broader cultural contexts. She skillfully deploys these concepts of fetishisms in discussing topics such as sexual difference, queer identities, computer culture and the ""post-human"" as well as applying them to her objects of study: cross-cultural dressers, technofetishists, cyberspace cowboys, cyborgs, geekgirls, and SM/fetish culture.

Full Product Details

9780813531762

Table of Contents

Reviews

"Amanda Fernbach takes on a truly impressive range of discourses and themesùhistorical, cultural, psychoanalytic, and literaryùand significantly advances the study of fetishism as a cultural symptomology.--Emily Apter ""chair of the department of comparative literature, UCLA"" The author has brought together a great deal of thinking that challenges or expands traditional Freudian theory of fetishism and, in effect, thereby creates a new master theory to use in her history. I respect and approve of such bold work.--John Maynard ""School of English, New York University"" Armed to the teeth with impressive material, in Fantasies of Fetishism Amanda Fernbach presents all the evidence one needs to recognize that the true lack in the Freudian perspective of the topic belongs to Freud. . . . Carefully and strategically Ms. Fernbach depicts a gamut of fetishes in order to show just how lame indeed is the Freudianùthe classical.--approach to accounting for them ""their causes, and their cultural loci. . . . For readers who wish to ponder the """

Armed to the teeth with impressive material, in Fantasies of Fetishism Amanda Fernbach presents all the evidence one needs to recognize that the true lack in the Freudian perspective of the topic belongs to Freud. . . . Carefully and strategically Ms. Fernbach depicts a gamut of fetishes in order to show just how lame indeed is the Freudianùthe classical. -- approach to accounting for them * their causes, and their cultural loci. . . . For readers who wish to ponder the * The author has brought together a great deal of thinking that challenges or expands traditional Freudian theory of fetishism and, in effect, thereby creates a new master theory to use in her history. I respect and approve of such bold work. -- John Maynard * School of English, New York University * Amanda Fernbach takes on a truly impressive range of discourses and themesùhistorical, cultural, psychoanalytic, and literaryùand significantly advances the study of fetishism as a cultural symptomology. -- Emily Apter * chair of the department of comparative literature, UCLA *

Author Information

Amanda Fernbach, a cultural studies scholar, has published widely on the subject of fetishism. She now lives in New York City.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available