| Victorian Fetishism: Intellectuals and Primitives Contributor(s): Logan, Peter Melville (Author) |
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ISBN: 0791476618 ISBN-13: 9780791476611 Publisher: State University of New York Press OUR PRICE: $90.25 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: January 2009 Annotation: Examines the importance of fetishism in nineteenthcentury cultural theory |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social |
| Dewey: 820.935 |
| LCCN: 2008003454 |
| Series: SUNY Series, Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century |
| Physical Information: 0.8" H x 6" W x 9" (1.00 lbs) 206 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 19th Century - Cultural Region - British Isles |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Victorian Fetishism argues that fetishism was central to the development of cultural theory in the nineteenth century. From 1850 to 1900, when theories of social evolution reached their peak, European intellectuals identified all "primitive" cultures with "Primitive Fetishism," a psychological form of self-projection in which people believe everything in the external world--thunderstorms, trees, stones--is alive. Placing themselves at the opposite extreme of cultural evolution, the Victorians defined culture not by describing what culture was but by describing what it was not, and what it was not was fetishism. In analyses of major works by Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, and Edward B. Tylor, Peter Melville Logan demonstrates the paradoxical role of fetishism in Victorian cultural theory, namely, how Victorian writers projected their own assumptions about fetishism onto the realm of historical fact, thereby "fetishizing" fetishism. The book concludes by examining how fetishism became a sexual perversion as well as its place within current cultural theory. |