Fetish-Fétiche-Feitiço redux

 The concept of the fetish is a little understood thing, in the modern world the word is commonly associated with any number of variations in human sexuality, expressed in what are generally considered idiosyncratic ways. Body parts; the lack thereof; situations; inanimate objects; etc., each serving as the specific focus of disparate urges and desires, distinguishable from each other and “usual habits” as a specific sexual fetish.

Wider use of the term refers to a created material object, thought to be endowed with supernatural power through the mystery of it's manufacture, whether for use as a channel of divine consciousness, protection against "evil spirits",  a device able to influence other people's behaviour or attitudes, every human culture can be seen to have utilized manufactured "fetish" objects at some point, in order to mediate the "tangible and intangible" aspects of the world, or extracted items in that world ascribing to them a range of supernatural properties.

The word comes down to English speakers via the French translation fétiche, of the Portuguese term feitiço {sorcery; artificial} derived from the Latin factitius {artificial} and facere {to make; act, take action; construct; produce; bring forth}.

Later Latin has facturari {to bewitch} and factura {witchcraft}, hence Portuguese feitiço, Italian fatatura, and French faiture {sorcery; witchcraft; magic}, terms coinciding with the exposure and response of Roman Catholic missionaries, to various diverse religious practices throughout the Portuguese Empire and Christian World.

The Latin root of these words is still in use in the modern English language: factitious {not spontaneous or natural; artificial; contrived} , fatuous {inane; unreal; illusory}, facade {a superficial appearance or illusion of something} and facsimile {an exact copy; equivalent of} are particularly relevant examples, reflecting a negative attitude towards art, religious mysticism over the centuries following industrialization, or used to refer to examples of inauthenticity, insincerity etc,.

Lisbon to Nagasaki

In the early 16^th century the seafaring Portuguese Empire spanned much of the world, Christian missionaries had begun the process of interacting with indigenous cultures throughout known Africa, South America and Asia, cataloguing their historical and religious systems while encouraging conversion from ancestral Animist theology to Christianity, amongst elders, tribal leaders and institutions within the indigenous social structure.

Portuguese commerce was already well established in the trade of African slaves, sugar and spices and Christianity was the State religion, in the 15^th century Portuguese Monarch King Afonso V funded the establishment of trading monopolies along the West Coast of Africa, with orders for the further explorations throughout uncharted territories in search of a passage to the “Indies”.

Portuguese expansion brought greater potential for cultural transmission deeper into Africa when Diego Cao -travelling along the uncharted Congo river around 1482- reached the Kingdom of Kongo, there he exchanged several of his men for a group of Kongolese Noblemen, stalwarts of the tribal community who were taken to Portugal to be indoctrinated into the Christian religion and experience the material grandeur of European Civilization before returning to Africa with their new found knowledge "understanding" of the power of the European Colonizers in 1485, inevitably convinced the tribes to accept conversion willingly assimilating Christian cultural structure and ideology into tradition tribal practice, the King himself Nzinga Nkuwu converted to Christianity upon Diego Cao's return with the Noblemen, within a few years the Kingdom was exchanging ambassadors with Portugal and the Vatican, Portugal continued it's explorations East of Africa, and Catholicism made for them a foothold on the mainland.

Traders obtaining these exotic and mystical "works of art", the tribal “Nkisi” of the African Shaman in the early periods of cultural transmission, selling them as "Feitiço” {fetish objects},  ornate charms devoid of any mystical power other than the ability to provoke fascination, as such modern anthropology has generally called them either "power objects" or "charms."**

It is during the productive process of the West African “Minkisi”, and the mystery this represents to the members of the tribe, that the mystical powers it holds, the purpose of the "spirit" within the object (it's value) is assigned, by the producer, it's effects thenceforth outside the producers control are dependent on it's observed effects of it's intended purpose, his confidence in the objects power dependent on how much he attributes material events to it's imperceptible influence.

William McGaffey writes* that the Kongo ritual system as a whole:

"bears a relationship similar to that which Marx supposed that 'political economy' bore to capitalism as its 'religion', ….The irrationally 'animate' character of the ritual system's symbolic apparatus, including minkisi, divination devices, and witch-testing ordeals, obliquely expressed real relations of power among the participants in ritual.

'Fetishism' is about relations among people, rather than the objects that mediate and disguise those relations." 

Ukisi is a Bantu word derived from the root kitį {spirit or material objects in which it is manifested or inhabits} and refers to an object ritually blessed by a “Nganga”, a member of the tribe who works as a healer and protector, a mediator of the tribe's relation to the incomprehensible forces of nature.

Attestation to the meaning of the term in Kongolese language was recorded by Dutch visitors in the early 17^th century, it was spelled "mokissie" the mu- prefix in this noun class was still pronounced until the 18^th century, when mu- evolved into a simple nasal n- reported by Dutch visitors to Loango as, referring both to a material item and the spiritual entity that inhabits it.

Native American

The Native American system of Fetishism shares many similarities with that of the East Kongolese, like the Ngango the Native American “Shaman” or “Medicine Man's” practice was mediated by numerous significant and particular fetish objects, anything used by the medicine man being viewed by members of the tribe with certain wonder, as though anything in his presence obtained a mystical volition, provoking not only fear but devotion and reverent awe depending on how the objects were intended to be used.

This form of artistic, “spiritual” social practice co-existed separately from the traditional religious beliefs of the Native Americans, who generally practised a form of Animism in which all matter is animated by the spirit of ancestors or a creator, being channeled through communal religious activities such as dancing, sacred rituals, forms of blessing, and worship of specific geographically or culturally relevant "spirits" (ie buffalo spirit), with the Shaman this is the practice of fashioning objects endowed with certain mystical power, of being an intermediary for the "intangible" forces of nature and providing tangible forms of order, betraying an implicit hierarchical social structure, based around fear and the unknown.

The difference between fetishism and general religious practice, is adequately described by Lewis Spence in his work on Native American Myths and Legends published by Senate: “A fetish...is the place of imprisonment of a subservient spirit,,,if it would gain the rank of godhead,(it) must do so by a long series of luck bringing, or at least by the performance of a number of marvels of a protective or fortune-making nature.”

Though there was much diversity of belief amongst the tribes, with geography, individual tribal histories, totems and particular practices differing greatly, the general idea of all things being composed fundamentally of spirit”, enabled the American Shaman just like the African Ngango, to construct fetish objects, from wood, bone or other materials, containing imprisoned spirits kept under some form of enchantment, the inspiration or idea behind an objects construction would usually remain symbolic, only being bestowed to the items heir through a form of ritualism possibly including a secret oath, if an object “lost” it's power of influence, if a “good luck” “charm” brought the bearer no luck at all, or if it's secret was discovered, it would be considered to have lost it's mystical “power”, therefore significance to the owner, who would seek to replace it with a new one, the sheer volume of fetish objects remaining in the archaeological record, testifies to the fact that the practice itself, being rooted in a broader idea of the nature of reality and human existence similar to Animism, far outlived the various individual objects themselves, only those objects which stood the test of experience assumed their position as important cultural items, others would become mere ornaments or items of jewellery holding only aesthetic interest to the owner.

We can see a clear parallel to this archaic practice of ritual in the modern church of the commodity, which provokes it's own moments of fervant exaltation.

Modern Practice

In contrast to the Indigenous use of “Feitiço”, official fetish objects such as: the crucifix; images of Jesus; St Christopher pendants; statues of Mary; etc,. although also inanimate man made objects (endowed with supernatural functions or transcendent abilities through ritual or mythology), were positively encouraged, the “Holy Book” of the Christian world becoming “Ukisi Nkanda”{Ukisi Book} of the Kongolese, the term “Ukisi” {a substance having characteristics of nkisi} being used to translate "holy" in the Kikongo Catechism of 1624.

This cultural practice pre-existed Christianity in every continent, even pre-Christian European, Celtic, Pagan, Greco-Roman and Norse culture, bear the unmistakable evidence of having used various objects in order to mediate the social relations between artisans, master craftsmen, expert poets, warriors, scholars and the masses, retaining a certain social hierarchy in place.

It is the ordering social relations within these systems, the law keeping, regulating aspects of the community for which objects of Fetishism were fashioned, ie the Etruscan “Fasces” symbol was used by the Romans as a symbol of the Judicial and Legal authority of the State, the Caduceus is used as a symbol of the medical establishment, or if we observe the practice of fetishism today; the Crucifix a symbol of religious suffering in devotion to Christ, the Ferrari a symbol of success and vast fortune; the Volkswagon a symbol of popular practicality; Audi a symbol of German efficiency, or “truth”; a symbol of meaning, importance, value or reliability.

In this blind struggle each commodity, by pursuing its own passion, unconsciously generates something beyond itself, while each particular manifestation of the commodity eventually falls in battle, the general commodity-form continues onward toward its absolute realization.

________

*

MacGaffey, Wyatt (Spring). "African objects and the idea of fetish". RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 25: 123-131.

**

John Thornton, "The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491-1750," Journal of African History 25 (1984): 156-57

further reading on the subject,

John Ogilby, Africa (London, 1670), p. 514)

Africa South of the Sahara. London: Europa Publications Ltd., n.d.
Balandier, Georges. Daily Life in the Kingdom of the Kongo: From the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century. London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1965.

Hilton, Anne. The Kingdom of Kongo. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.

MacGaffey, Wyatt. Religion and Society in Central Africa: The BaKongo of Lower Zaire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Olfert Dapper, Naukeurige Beschrijvinge der Africa Gewesten (Amsterdam, 1668), p. 548 (see English translation in John Ogilby, Africa (London, 1670), p. 514)


Dupré, Marie-Claude (1975). "Les système des forces nkisi chez le Kongo d'après le troisième volume de K. Laman," Africa

The Problem of the Fetish, II: The Origin of the Fetish

William Pietz

RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics
No. 13 (Spring, 1987), pp. 23-45
Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20166762

The Freedom Façade

Like the "truth" fetish, the "freedom" façade is an example of the misappropriation, and manipulation of symbolic terminology in order to convince oneself or others, of the authenticity or viability of whatever form of ideological surrender is being presented through factitiously appealing slogans like "truth" or "freedom".

As astute readers of this blog will already be aware, "fetish" objects as those constructed by a "magic man" or shaman in the African, Asian or American traditions, were often said to encapsulate a certain "spirit" or power, eliciting fear, anxiety, influence, submission or fascination in the target(s) for which they were intended.

Subesequently, reflecting the social power relations pertaining to "ownership" of the fetish or stewardship of the force it contains, the "sense" of reverence, confidence or respect in the individual(s) for whom it was manufactured, is derived from the fetish object's (continuing) mystified social power.*

The freedom façade is regularly deployed like the "truth" fetish, and other superficial slogans, in order to appeal to the broadest mass of the people, (as anybody who has seen the film "Braveheart", or follows a libertarian on twitter knows), however and all the more insidiously, as a derivative of this former condition it is used by the individual themselves, as a means with which to convince themselves of the delusion;

a) that there can be such a thing as an "individual" in a socially cooperative mammalian species such as ours, and that this supposed individual can enjoy unlimited freedoms..
b) that the species beyond those from which you derive some gratification aren't important.
c) that individuality, promoting internalization of socially derived laws and customs into superficially atomized units is a sustainable or positive trait.
d) that personal avarice is at least a birth right if not a duty.
e) that corporations have no responsibility to the society they profit from by being a part of.
f) that alienation will dissipate the more you consume, identify with, and adhere to the precepts of, constantly emerging forms of commodity fetishism.
g) that people don't have a responsibility to look after the environment or public institutions.

The freedom façade also provides a constantly elusive target, with which the individual preoccupies himself amidst the existential emptiness currently plaguing Western liberal capitalist societies.

With greater freedom one only discovers and "unlocks" greater freedoms, but none of these freedoms are without costs, financial or otherwise, the more "individuals" focus on the exact same sorts of self gratifications, numerous private interests competing for ever more finite resources, the further from the most basic collectivist principles "humanity" slips.

One man's freedom to enjoy something turns into his freedom to monopolize the market in that particular commodity or service, one man's freedom to believe what he wants to, becomes his freedom to indoctrinate, one man's freedom is another person's slavery, apply the laws of "freedom" to one's body and the entire concept would fall apart, as would our body if it's elements were not highly regulated within a highly organized network of complementary, mutually beneficial elements working toward the goal of sustaining life.

The very existence of the freedom façade is due to our over identification with the mind, with mental images, representations instead of the things themselves, our tendency towards abstract utopian thinking instead of reasonable criticisms against the already existing conditions impeding any such progress.

As numerous examples within the music industry or alternative media show, an entirely unoriginal mammalian impulse, say rebellion, when re-branded into a marketably popular commodity form, by creating an outlet for people's attention and energy in the manner of a pressure relief valve, feeds the continual expansion of commodity production, and it's ability to satisfy increasingly abstract demands of greater numbers of people.

Any change is merely quantitative and required to sustain interest in the crumbling façade of "freedom available to all", just as it offers pseudo-goods to be coveted, and false models of revolution to naive local activists, the most advanced forms of capitalist production offer distractions for your wandering eye, ideal solutions for your dissatisfaction, and pre-packaged products or actions for your revolutionary impulses.

The function of "ideal" objects of identification, serving as the self obsessed agents of the most developed form of capitalist production, is to act out various lifestyles or sociopolitical viewpoints in an unrestrained, "totally free" manner.

They embody the inaccessible results of social labour by dramatizing the by-products of that labour being magically projected above it as its ultimate goals: power and holidays— the decision-making and consumption that are at the beginning and the end of a process that is never questioned.

___
*.A concrete example today would be the sense of desire, envy, lack or determination, one might experience from not being able to purchase an "IPhone", the idol of Krisna manipulated by Russel Brand is a similar principle.

Who wields the reproduced image of Krisna or Jesus Christ's, commands the fascination of the non-critical.

Reinventing Religious Brands

While revisiting some of the more popular of Brand's previous video productions, I happened upon a clip from Series One of his American talk show “Brand X”, in which he was joined by two members of the religious fundamentalist group the “Westboro Baptist Church”. The WBC are well known for public adherence to archaic Judeo Christian morality, their opposition to homosexuality, “liberalism” and women's rights has been publicized, ridiculed and condemned on British Television staples like “The Jeremy Kyle Show” and “Louis Theroux Investigates”.

This was a perfect example of the old world meeting the new, the contradictory, regimental faith of the literal Bible preaching WBC, pitted against the flowery, free flowing platitudes of the patchwork transcendental “Brahmanism”, espoused by Brand, surely he wouldn't pass up this opportunity to ridicule and condemn the theological perversions of the ugly irrational bigots in the Westboro Baptists?

After “welcoming with love” the WBC, he attempts to disarm them using ostentatious displays of humility, speaking softly of truth, love and acceptance, he even goes as far as to accept the existence of their lord Jesus Christ, albeit with a few minor adjustments; “from what i've had explained to me, his main message was definitely; tolerance and love and truth and beauty and acceptance”.

This was more like a spectacular struggle between religious ideologies; the emerging, liberal, eastern mystical syncretism of Brand, seeking to over ride and assimilate the declining authoritarian, bible based Christian conservatism of the Westboro Baptist Church.

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain, not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower."*

This idealized conception of Jesus which Russel Brand has, “had explained” to him, serves as a fetish object to mediate his antagonism towards the WBC, he attempts to convince them they share this object of fascination, reproducing the “main message” he brought to humanity he appeals directly to the WBC to embrace a revised form of their own religion, devoid of the very laws and customs designed to retain the cultural identity of the original recipients of the book.

Thousands of years of cultural syncretism has given birth to numerous hybrid offspring, each religious priesthood incorporating their own environmental, economic or cultural conditions into a pre-existing mythological narrative, in which everything was created, pre-formed and ordered by a mystical divine intelligence, not real people, and is only comprehensible through hierarchical systems of revealed truth, compiled and bestowed by way of an intermediary Priesthood, the story is always the same, the organization of society according to divine instructions, the alienation of man from his potential, the imposition of strict behavioural guidelines and deadly punishments.

Brand glorifies this reproduction of Jesus as any Muslim, Hare Krishna, Mormon, Jehovah's Witness or Catholic would glorify their respective reproductions of “Jesus”, like these systems he has to revise the basis of the WBC's Jesus fetish, the interpretation and meaning of the “Holy Bible”, to reproduce his own version; “The Bible like all religious doctrine may be allegorical & symbolic to direct us towards one “Holy Entity of Love”, as opposed to a specific litigenous text to direct the behaviour of human beings”.

Having likely never read the Bible it's easy for Brand to innocently misrepresent it as some idealized font of spiritual wisdom, but actually it is not allegorical or symbolic, rather predominantly composed of the laws, customs and mythologised history, of a patriarchal tribe living in the Levant around four thousand years ago which has been adapted and translated numerous times by numerous cultural elites, it is and always has been used for exactly what he says it isn't, his interpretation or the inversion of the truth.

Perhaps aspects of the Bible are “symbolic”, much of it certainly appears to be nonsensical if taken literally, by selecting quotations and fragments you can essentially build up a theological support for whatever you want to push, this idea of the God of the Bible being some “holy entity of love” is particularly far fetched and more importantly highly contradictory, unless one dismisses almost completely the Tanakh, the original material known as the Old Testament. (see footnote) 

With people abandoning the existing Christian faith, in no small part because of it's outdated moral imperitives, it's basis as "a specific litigenous text to direct the behaviour of human beings", Brand attempts to reinvent it, insidiously setting up a new faith beneath his attractive platitudes, an idealized "Holy Entity of Love".

The WBC -who's ideology has a firm basis in the OT- don't even accept this idealized representation of their faith; “you fashion a conception of God out of your own dark hearts”, one of the spokesmen accuses Brand and the audience, before explaining to them that God is a stern parent, to love is not to unconditionally accept, that there are commandments and covenants with God to fulfil.

The reason they preach against the 21^st century and chastise people's freedom of choice, is;“because we love them (targets of their pickets) and don't want them to burn in hell” they lack the “spiritual” niceties, smooth words, and idealistic dreams used by Brand to appeal to people's emotions, they just weigh in with the heavy threats of eternal damnation and torture, strict rules and regulations.

Because somebody wrote a really scary story thousands of years ago to get people to follow their commandments, about what would happen if they didn't follow those commandments, a priesthood found that a person's life could be influenced by their concept of death, their attention and behaviour regulated by the subtle manipulation of their imagination.

The idea of a thing could be more powerful than the non-existing reality of that thing itself, in this way inadequacies, sin and shame were attributed in generous measure to all and sundry, reproduced and elaborated on through various religious systems over the ages, self persecution from which the intermediary priesthood of the age offered various forms of salvation and sanctuary.

To this Brand states: “I agree with the basics, it's just where it goes into the sex because I just think it's such a low priority when there's so many important things happening. What do you reckon God thinks about the ecological disaster and the growing power of the corporations, don't you think he is worried about that more than 'the bumming'?”, which is a fair point, if there was a God i'm sure he would be less interested in individual human experiences than in the general wellbeing of the collective lifeforms on the planet, but there's no evidence of such a being looking out for the wellbeing of any of the countless extinct and oppressed lifeforms on the Planet, so this concession to the basic tenets of their delusion can only be intended to neutralize their hostility towards his own religion, to shine a warm enhancing light upon the mist enveloped regions of the religious world in general.

This betrays Russell's agenda as if it wasn't clear from his rebranding of the Bible, he appeals to populist sentiment on the environment, against fracking, ecological disasters and against corporations, attempting to hijack or direct the “spirit” of rebellion emerging at this moment, attempting passify the vibrant criticisms and critical actions of the youth with talk of “love and acceptance and tolerance”, not to mention this glorification of religious humility, the negation of objective reality; detachment and self abandonment in the face of tasks humanity must tackle, clear sightedly without delusion, with awareness and innovation, having won through to ourselves.

“You don't give God, your maker the glory for making you and giving you that position”

“I do I do”

“No you don't”

“This is definitely due to a powerful cosmic entity, that creates all energy, and wants us all to be unified and loving, if I didn't make that clear I'm sorry”

 "Look here's good old bloody Krishna, dancing on the head of evil to acknowledge that everything belongs to God"

Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters does this man appear sane to you?

______

Demonstrating his ignorance towards the Hebrew Old Testament, Brand takes the position of an adherent of Jesus Christ and the New Testament in his misrepresentation of it...On the left are Jewish scholars, on the right are Christians:

*Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1844