Cultures of Fetishism (41 page)

I turn once more to Karl Marx, who sustained the movement of his theories by writing too many words for any one human being to read and absorb in one lifetime—unless she were to devote that entire life to Marxist scholarship. Yet, the prophetic vitality of so many of those words and phrases are particularly germane to the conclusion of this book. Because a central focus of
Cultures of Fetishism
has been on the various ways that the fetishism strategy leads to an undermining of human vitality and creativity, I want to return to Marx’s ideas on the repetition compulsion, where the past “weighs like an incubus on the present.”
43

Sometimes when I am wondering why the peoples of this Earth do not rebel against the conditions that dehumanize them and alienate them from themselves and those they love, I recall Engels’ comment, “It really seems as if Hegel in his grave were acting as a World Spirit and directing history, ordaining most conscientiously that it should all be unrolled twice over, once as a great tragedy and once as a wretched farce.”
44
When Marx, a year later, went on to expand on Engels’ memory of Hegel’s wisdom, he described how human beings, as they make every effort to create a form of human existence that does not yet exist, continually repeat the slogans and spirits of dead gen- erations. Just as human beings appear to be engaged in a revolutionary trans- formation of themselves and their material surroundings, “they anxiously summon up the spirits of the past to their aid, borrowing from them names, rallying cries, costumes, in order to stage the new world historical dream in a time-honored disguise and borrowed speech.”
45

As I re-read these words, for possibly the hundreth time, I saw how they relate to the principles of the fetishism strategy. It is safer to stick to what is known and certain, even if it means to suffer and re-suffer the traumas of the past, rather than attempt to create something new and uncertain, with all its tempting ambiquities and challenging possibilities. Creativity is a danger. “Where there is a spark, there may develop a fire. Extinguish it before it is too late.”
46

Where does hope lie? With so much weighing against the possibilities of altering the human condition, when so many cultural enterprises are vulner- able to the fetishism strategy, what might we do?

I find myself drawn once more to the biographers. I return to the conclu- sion of Leon Edel’s elucidation of Lytton Strachey’s tribute to biography as “the most delicate and humane of all the branches of the art of writing.”
47
Because biography is a delicate and humane process, “it partakes of all the ambiguities and uncertainties of life itself. A biography is a record in words of
something that is mercurial and flowing, as compact of temperament and emo- tion as the human spirit itself
. The biographer must be neat and orderly and logical in describing this
flamelike human spirit which delights in defying order and neatness and logic
.”
48

As I said earlier in this chapter, we might think of
Cultures of Fetishism
as “A Plea for a Measure of Impurity.” Perhaps a defiance of order and neatness and logic keeps alive this flamelike human spirit? Perhaps, then, we should not be so frightened of this flamelike spirit that delights in defying law and order? Perhaps we might take the risk of defying the order of the world? Perhaps we might take the risk of being different from our friends and neigh- bors and begin to challenge the order and neatness of our own lives? Perhaps we should not be so afraid of creating something new? At the very least, we should be alert to the danger of repeating the traumas of the past each time we venture forth to create something different and new.

In order to create something new, we need to be willing to tolerate stay- ing in “the knot of not-knowing.”
49
We want to be friendly to uncertainty and ambiguity. We need to embrace Keats’ negative capability. And even though it is difficult to sustain, it is certainly an advantage to brave “being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
50
We needn’t swaddle up all the uncertainties and mysteries into a tidy bundle of wisdom. We need to give them room to breathe and wriggle around and kick their feet.

I ask myself, “Am I afraid of ending the dialogue I have had with you?” The ending of a book, after all, is not the same as the ending of a life. Ending a book is not a wrapping up of all the loose ends and “falling plump into the grave, with a tombstone over our head.” It is an opportunity to keep the motion going. Many of the words I have written here will probably re- appear, materialize in some other form, in the essays and books that I write in the future. Ending a book is difficult because it entails the grief of separating from something precious we have been engaged with and become attached to. Finally, ending a book is simply one more acknowledgment that however free we sometimes imagine we are or might become, we are eternally bound by the unrelenting laws of time and space. Sometimes “house arrest” is a blessing.
51

R
eferences and
N
otes

1 F
etishism and the
F
etishism
S
trategy

Bloom, Harold (2002).
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.

New York: Warner Books, 2002.

Brooks, David (2003). “A Fetish of Candor,”
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Cox, Caroline (2004).
Stiletto
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Derrida, Jacques (1996).
Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression
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Foster, Hal (1993). “The Art of Fetishism: Notes on Dutch Still Life,”
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Kaplan, Louise (1991).
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Marx, Karl (1867) [1976].
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——— (1856). “Speech at the Anniversary of the
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Norwich, William (2003) “Rubber Maids,”
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Ping, Wang (2000).
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Smith, Dinitia (2004). “Real-Life Questions in an Upscale Fantasy,”
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1. Webster, 842, definition 2.
   

2. Kaplan, 35–6.
   

3. Norwich, 76–8.
   

4. Webster, 842.
   

5. Webster, 842.
   

6. Thurman, 108.
   

1. Notes
   

2. Bloom, 8.
   

3. Brooks.
   

4. Brooks.
   

5. Brooks.
   

11. Marx (1867), 342.

12. Marx (1867), 342.

13. Marx (1856), 300.

1. Kaplan, 33.
   

2. Derrida, 11.
   

3. Smith, 5.
   

17. Cox,
passim
, 82–3, 86.

1. Ping, 9.
   

2. Foster, 253. 20. Foster, 253–54.
   

1. Foster, 254.
   

2. Foster, 255.
   

3. Foster, 255.
   

4. Foster, 257.
   

5. Foster, 257.
   

6. Foster, 260.
   

7. Foster, 264.
   

8. Foster, 264.
   

2 U
nraveling
F
reud
ON
F
etishism

Chernow, Barbara A. and Vallasi, George A., eds (1993).
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Freud, Sigmund (1905). “Three essays on the theory of sexuality,”
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——— (1924). “The dissolution of the Oedipus Complex,”
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——— (1925b). “An autobiographical study,”
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, XX. Postscript. (1935).
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——— (1927). “Fetishism,”
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, XXI.

——— (1937). “Analysis terminable and interminable,”
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, XXIII.

——— (1960).
Letters of Sigmund Freud
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——— and Andreas-Salome, Lou.
Letters
, Ed. Ernst Pfeiffer (1966), trans. Willaim and Elaine Robson Scott (1972). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.

Gay, Peter (1988).
Freud: A Life for our Time
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Jones, Ernest (1957).
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Kaplan, Louise J. (1991).
Female Perversions: The Temptations of Emma Bovary
. New York: Nan A Talese, Doubleday.

Nafasi, Azar (2000).
Reading Lolita in Tehran
. New York: Random House paper- back, 2004.

Schur, Max (1972).
Freud: Living and Dying
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1. Freud (1927), 154.

2. Freud (1927), 154.

3. Freud (1927), 154.

4. Freud (1927), 154.

5. Freud (1927), 157.

6. Freud (1927), 152.

1. Letter to Kata and Lajos Levy, June 11, 1923, Freud (1960).
   

2. Ibid.
   

3. Gay, 421, citing postcard to Sandor Ferenzi, Freud-Ferenzi Collection, Library of Congress.
   

4. Schur, 360, citing Freud’s October 15, 1926 letter.
   

5. Ibid.
   

6. Gay, 422, citing Freud’s August 13, 1923 letter.
   

7. Gay, 422, citing Freud’s August 18, 1923 letter, Freud Museum, London.
   

8. Gay, 422, citing Freud’s October 15, 1926 letter.
   

9. Schur, 365.
   

10. Jones, 94.
    

11. Jones, 94.
    

12. Jones, 95.
    

13. Jones, 95.
    

14. Jones, 95.
    

15. Jones, 95.
    

16. Schur, 396.
    

17. Schur, 364.
    

18. Schur, 379.
    

19. Freud and Salome, 154.
    

20. Freud and Salome, 154. 27. Freud (1925b) (1935), 71. 28. Freud (1925b) (1935),71. 29. Freud (1925b) (1935), 72. 30. Freud (1925b) (1935), 72. 31. Freud (1925a), 248.
    

32. Freud (1925a), 248.

33. Freud (1925a), 249.

34. Freud (1924), 178. Editors note that this paraphrase of Napoleon’s epigram had already appeared in 1912,
SE
, 11, 189.

35. Freud (1925a), 252.

36. Freud (1925a), 252.

37. Freud (1925a), 252.

38. Gay, 515.

39. Gay, 515.

40. Gay, 515.

41. Gay, 515.

42. Freud (1925a), 252.

43. Freud (1925a), 252.

44. Freud (1925a), 253.

45. Freud (1925a), 253.

1. Freud and Salome, 154.
   

2. Schur, 384.
   

48. Freud (1927), 152.

49. Freud (1927), 152.

50. Freud (1927), 153.

51. Freud (1927), 155.

52. Freud (1927), 154.

53. Freud (1927), 154–55.

54. Freud (1937), 250–52.

55. Freud (1927), 157.

56. Freud (1927), 157.

57. Freud (1937), 250–52.

1. Chernow and Vallasi: Iran, 1355–6.
   

2. Nafasi, 26.
   

3. Nafasi, 27.
   

4. Nafasi, 72.
   

5. Nafasi, 73.
   

6. Nafasi, 73.
   

7. Nafasi, 73.
   

65. Freud (1927), 157.

66. Freud (1927), 157.

67. Freud (1927), 157.

3 F
ootbinding and the
C
ultures of

F
etishism that
B
reed
I
t

Levy, Howard S. (1966).
Chinese Footbinding: The History of a Curious Custom
. London: Neville Spearman Limited. New American edition:
Lotus Lovers: The Complete History of the Curious Erotic Custom of Footbinding in China
. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus (1992).

Ping, Wang (2000).
Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China
. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press.

Tylim, Isaac (2004). “China: psychoanalysis’ new frontier,”
The Round Robin
, Spring.

1. Ping, 145.

1. Tylim, 5–6.
   

2. Tylim, 21.
   

3. Ping, 29–53,
   passim
   . 5. Ping, 29–30.
   

6. Ping, 33–4.

7. Ping, 145–73; 235–37.

8. Ping, 46–7.

9. Ping, 48.

10. Ping, 145–73.

11. Interviews: Levy, 203–85,
passim
. 12. Levy, 261–62.

13. Levy, 258.

14. Levy 225, 254, 263.

15. Levy, 24, 25.

16. Levy, 222–23 and 203–28,
passim
. Ping, 18–24.

17. Levy drawings 42, 43, 115, photographs 79, 94, 231. 18. Levy, 136–37.

19. Levy, 134–35.

20. Levy, 133. 21. Levy, 160–63. 22. Levy, 160–63. 23. Levy, 160–63. 24. Levy, 160–63.