Fetishism Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
- A separate article is devoted to sexual fetishism.
A
fetish (from
French fétiche, from
Portuguese feitiço, from
Latin facticius) is a natural object believed to have
supernatural powers, or in particular a thing created by people that has power over people. The concept was coined by Charles de Brosses in
1757 and was originally used in the 18th century by French and German scholars to characterize the earliest stages in the evolution of
religion. In the
19th century anthropologists and
historians of
religion such as
E. B. Tylor and J. F. McLennan developed the theories of
animism and
totemism to account for fetishism. The concept of “fetishism” allowed historians of religion to shift attention from the relationship between people and God to the relationship between people and material objects; moreover, it established false models of causal explanations of natural events as a central problem for historians and social theorists.
In the 19th century Karl Marx appropriated the term to describe commodity fetishism as an important component of capitalism.
Later Sigmund Freud appropriated the concept to describe a form of paraphilia where the object of affection is an inanimate object or a specific part of a person. See sexual fetish for more details on the concept of sexual fetishism and its sub-categories.
See also
This is an Article on Fetishism. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Fetishism
