"Fetishism and Its Discontents "argues that post-1960 American fiction utilizes fetishism as a strategy for expressing social and political discontent and for negotiating traumatic experiences. Through close readings of novels and short stories by Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, Ishmael Reed, John Hawkes, and Tim O’Brien, among others, Christopher Kocela moves away from the entrenched, Freudian constructs of fetishism and uncovers a new understanding of the fetish as a parallax object that testifies to often threatening differences in racial, gender, and class perspectives.  The first detailed study of its kind, this book brings originality and rigor to a culturally timely topic.   

This study explores the concept of fetishism as a strategy for expressing social and political discontent in American literature, and for negotiating traumatic experiences particular to the second half of the twentieth century.