A groundbreaking account of the origins and history of the idea of fetishism. In recent decades, William Pietz's innovative history of the idea of the fetish has become a cult classic. Gathered here, for the first time, is his complete series of essays on fetishism, supplemented by three texts on Marx, blood sacrifice, and the money value of human life. Tracing the idea of the fetish from its origins in the Portuguese colonization of West Africa to its place in Enlightenment thought and beyond, Pietz reveals the violent emergence of a foundational concept for modern theories of value, belief, desire, and difference. This book cements Pietz's legacy of engaging questions about material culture, object agency, merchant capitalism, and spiritual power, and introduces a powerful theorist to a new generation of thinkers.

A groundbreaking account of the origins and history of the idea of fetishism. In recent decades, William Pietz's innovative history of the idea of the fetish has become a cult classic. Gathered here, for the first time, is his complete series of essays on fetishism, supplemented by three texts on Marx, blood sacrifice, and the money value of human life. Tracing the idea of the fetish from its origins in the Portuguese colonization of West Africa to its place in Enlightenment thought and beyond, Pietz reveals the violent emergence of a foundational concept for modern theories of value, belief, desire, and difference. This book cements Pietz's legacy of engaging questions about material culture, object agency, merchant capitalism, and spiritual power, and introduces a powerful theorist to a new generation of thinkers.

Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, number 26, presents several studies from distant fields that relate to each other by addressing an underlying and eminently historical theme, that of performative reconstruction. This theme appears throughout the issue under various guises, by considering how disparate and evanescent ritual actions may have critically affected representational forms whose traces have lasted to our day. The issue also includes an illuminating lecture, originally given at the College de France, on the pervasive and elusive roles of nymphs as vehicles for primal forces in Greek mythology and philosophy, and their reappearance in later European literature (Robert Calasso), as well as two studies that address the complex question of the English and Continental representation of black Africans in the Enlightenment era (David Bindman and Helen Weston).

Salvador Dalí's Art and Writing, 1927-1942 examines the evolution of Dalí's art during the 1920s and 30s, when he was associated, first with the Catalan avant-grade, and then with the Surrealist group in Paris. During this period, Dalí's painting style changed radically, a phenomenon that has never been fully accounted for in the extensive literature on this subject. Haim Finkelstein's study is the first to examine these writings in detail as the foundation for the evolution of Dalí's unique artistic vision.