Abstract

This dissertation examines theories of fetishism, with the aim both to redefine fetishism as a positive strategy for postmodern thought and to examine the implications fetishism holds for modern assumptions about the nature of the world and its inhabitants. It is a serious effort not just to think about fetishism, but more importantly to think through fetishism, using it as a strategic perspective for analysing assumptions about subjects and objects, desire and knowledge, identity and sexual differences. The method incorporates close analysis of Freud's texts and broader readings of recent feminist theories of fetishism and melancholia. By positing how a fetishist would look at certain pressing questions of today--such as identity politics, the ways we define gender and other sexual differences, the question of how to know things when there is no absolute standard of truth, or indeed how to read and interpret at all--this analysis hopes to demonstrate fetishism's epistemological possibilities, particularly for feminist analysis and queer theory, though certainly not limited to them