Overview

Fur has sparked controversies since sumptuary laws marked it as a luxury item and as a sign of medieval class privilege. Drawing on a range of historical and contemporary sources, the author of this study shows how a material good has become both a symbol of wealth and sexuality, and a symptom of class, gender and imperial antagonisms. Emberley documents the 1980s confrontations between animal rights activists and native peoples which pitted ""Lynx"", the organization responsible for high-profile anti-fur advertisements in Great Britain, against Inuit and Dene societies' claims for a livelihood based on the selling and trading, consumption and production of animal fur. The fetishization of fur, the author shows, extends from early modern paintings and etchings to late-19th century literary and psychoanalytical narratives of sexual fantasy, such as von Sacher-Masoch's novel ""Venus in Furs"". Contemporary advertising and fashion photography, as well as films such as ""Paris is Burning"" reveal the ongoing fetishistic practices of the fashion world. From colonial fur trading to 20th-century globalization of the fur industry, Emberley analyzes the cultural, political, material and libidinal values ascribed to fur.

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Julia V. Emberley is Associate Professor in the Women's Studies Undergraduate and Gender Studies Graduate Programs at the University of Northern British Columbia. She is the author of Thresholds of Difference: Feminist Critique, Native Women's Writings, Postcolonial Theory.

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