Difference between revisions of "Fetish/Fetishistic disavowal"

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fetishism (fÈtichisme)               
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{{Top}}[[fétichisme]]{{Bottom}}             
  
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==Definition==
 +
The term "[[fetishism|fetish]]" first came into widespread use in the eighteenth century in the context of the study of "[[religion|primitive religions]]", in which it denoted an inanimate object of worship.
  
The term 'fetish' used in the context of the study of 'primitive religions' denotes an inanimate object of worship.
+
In the nineteenth century, [[Marx]] borrowed the term to describe the way that, in [[capitalist]] societies, [[social]] relations assume the [[illusory]] [[form]] of relations between things ("[[commodity fetishism]]").
  
 +
==Perversion==
 +
It was Krafft-Ebing who, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, first applied the term to [[sexuality|sexual behavior]].
  
[[Karl Marx]] used the term '[[commodity fetishism]]]' to describe the way that, in capitalist society, social relations assume the illusory form of relations between things.
+
He defined [[fetishism]] as a [[perversion|sexual perversion]] in which [[enjoyment|sexual excitement]] is absolute dependent on the [[presence]] of a specific [[object]] (the [[fetishism|fetish]]).
  
 +
The [[fetishism|fetish]] is usually an inanimate [[object]] such as a shoe or piece of underwear.
  
Fetishism is a sexual perversion in which sexual excitement is absolutely dependent on the presence of a specific object (the fetish).
+
==Sigmund Freud==
The fetish is usually an inanimate object such as a shoe or piece of underwear.
+
[[Freud]] argued that [[fetishism]] (seen as an almost exclusively [[male]] [[perversion]]) originates in the [[child]]'s [[horror]] of [[female]] [[castration]].  
Freud argued that fetishism (seen as an almost exclusively male perversion) originates in the child's horror of female castration. Confronted with the mother's lack of a penis, the fetishist disavows this lack and finds an object (the fetish) as a symbolic substitute for the mother's missing penis.<ref>Freud, 1927e</ref>
 
  
 +
Confronted with the [[mother]]'s [[lack]] of a [[penis]], the [[fetishism|fetishist]] [[disavow]]s this [[lack]] and finds an [[object]] (the [[fetish]]) as a [[symbolic]] [[substitute]] for the mother's [[lack|missing]] [[penis]].<ref>{{F}}. "[[Works of Sigmund Freud|Fetishism]]", 1927e. [[SE]] XXI, 149</ref>
  
 +
==Jacques Lacan==
 +
In [[Lacan]]'s first approach to the subject of [[fetishism]], in 1956, he argues that [[fetishism]] is a particularly important area of study and bemoans its neglect by his contemporaries.
  
In Lacan's first approach to the subject of fetishism, in 1956, he argues that fetishism is a particularly important area of study and bemoans its neglect by his contemporaries.  
+
He stresses that the equivalence between the [[fetishism|fetish]] and the [[mother|maternal]] [[phallus]] can only be [[understood]] by reference to [[linguistic]] transformations, and not by reference to "vague analogies in the [[visual]] field" such as comparisons between fur and pubic hair."<ref>{{L}} "[[Works of Jacques Lacan|Variantes de la cure-type]]", in {{E}} [1956b]. p. 267)</ref>
  
He stresses that the equivalence between the fetish and the maternal PHALLUs can only be understood by reference to linguistic transformations, and not by reference to 'vague analogies in the visual field' such as comparisons between fur and pubic hair (Lacan, 1956b: 267).  
+
He cites [[Freud]]'s [[analysis]] of the phrase "''Glanz auf der Nase''" as support for his argument.<ref>{{F}} "[[Works of Sigmund Freud|Fetishism]]", 1927e. [[SE]] XXI, 149</ref>
  
He cites Freud's analysis of the phrase 'Glanz auf der Nase' as support for his argument (see Freud, 1927e).
+
==Penis and Phallus==
 +
In the following years, as [[Lacan]] develops his [[distinction]] between the [[penis]] and [[phallus]], he emphasises that the [[fetishism|fetish]] is a substitute for the latter, not the former.  
  
 +
==Disavowal==
 +
[[Lacan]] also extends the [[mechanism]] of [[disavowal]], making it the operation constitutive of [[perversion]] itself, and not just of the [[fetishism|fetishistic]] [[perversion]].
  
In the following years, as Lacan develops his distinction between the penis and phallus, he emphasises that the fetish is a substitute for the latter, not the former.
+
==Male Perversion==
Lacan also extends the mechanism of [[disavowal]], making it the operation constitutive of perversion itself, and not just of the fetishistic perversion.
+
However, he retains [[Freud]]'s view that [[fetishism]] is an exclusively [[male]] [[perversion]],<ref>{{Ec}} p. 734</ref> or at least extremely rare among [[women]].<ref>{{S4}} p.154</ref>
However, he retains Freud's view that fetishism is an exclusively male perversion,<ref>Ec, 734</ref> or at least extremely rare among women.<ref>S4, 154</ref>
 
  
In the seminar of 1956-7, Lacan elaborates an important distinction between the fetish object and the phobic object; whereas the fetish is a symbolic substitute for the mother's missing phallus, the phobic object is an imaginary substitute for symbolic castration (see PHOBIA).
+
==Phobic Object==
Like all perversions, fetishism is rooted in the preoedipal triangle of mother-child-phallus (S4, 84-5, 194).
+
In the [[seminar]] of 1956-7, [[Lacan]] elaborates an important distinction between the [[fetishism|fetish]] [[object]] and the [[phobic]] [[object]]; whereas the [[fetish]] is a [[fetishism|symbolic]] substitute for the [[mother]]'s [[lack|missing]] [[phallus]], the [[phobia|phobic]] [[object]] is an [[imaginary]] substitute for [[symbolic]] [[castration]].  
However, it is unique in that it involves both identification with mother and with the imaginary phallus; indeed, in fetishism, the subject oscillates between these two identifications.<ref>S4, 86, 160</ref>
 
  
Lacan's statement, in 1958, that the penis 'takes on the value of a fetish' for heterosexual women raises a number of interesting questions.<ref>E, 290</ref>
+
==Preoedipal Triangle==
Firstly, it reverses Freud's views on fetishism; rather than the fetish being a symbolic substitute for the real penis, the real penis may itself become a fetish by substituting the woman's absent symbolic phallus.
+
Like all [[perversion]]s, [[fetishism]] is rooted in the [[preoedipal]] [[structure|triangle]] of [[mother]]-[[child]]-[[phallus]].<ref>{{S4}} p. 84-5, 194</ref>
Secondly, it undermines the claims (made by both Freud and Lacan) that fetishism is extremely rare among women; if the penis can be considered a fetish, then fetishism is clearly far more prevalent among women than among men.
 
  
== def ==
+
However, it is unique in that it involves both [[identification]] with [[mother]] and with the [[imaginary]] [[phallus]]; indeed, in [[fetishism]], the [[subject]] oscillates between these two [[identification]]s.<ref>{{S4}} p. 86, 160</ref>
The displacement of desire and fantasy onto alternative objects or body parts (eg. a foot fetish or a shoe fetish), in order to obviate a subject's confrontation with the castration complex.
 
Freud came to realize in his essay on "Fetishism" that the fetishist is able at one and the same time to believe in his phantasy and to recognize that it is nothing but a phantasy.
 
And yet, the fact of recognizing the phantasy as phantasy in no way reduces its power over the individual.
 
Octave Mannoni, in an influential essay, phrased this paradoxical logic in this way: "je sais bien, mais quand-même" or "I know very well, but nevertheless."
 
Zizek builds on this idea in theorizing the nature of ideology, which follows a similar contradictory logic.
 
Kristeva goes so far as to associate all language with fetishism: "It is perhaps unavoidable that, when a subject confronts the factitiousness of object relation, when he stands at the place of the want that founds it, the fetish becomes a life preserver, temporary and slippery, but nonetheless indispensable.  
 
But is not exactly language our ultimate and inseparable fetish?
 
And language, precisely, is based on fetishist denial ('I know that, but just the same,' 'the sign is not the thing, but just the same,' etc.) and defines us in our essence as speaking beings."<ref>37</ref>
 
  
 +
==Women==
 +
[[Lacan]]'s [[statement]], in 1958, that the [[penis]] "takes on the [[value]] of a fetish" for heterosexual women raises a [[number]] of interesting questions.<ref>{{E}} p. 290</ref>
  
== References ==
+
Firstly, it reverses [[Freud]]'s views on [[fetishism]]; rather than the [[fetishism|fetish]] [[being]] a [[symbolic]] substitute for the [[real]] [[penis]], the [[real]] [[penis]] may itself become a [[fetishism|fetish]] by substituting the [[woman]]'s [[absent]] [[symbolic]] [[phallus]].
<references/>
 
  
[[Category:Lacan]]
+
Secondly, it undermines the claims (made by both [[Freud]] and [[Lacan]]) that [[fetishism]] is extremely rare among [[women]]; if the [[penis]] can be considered a [[fetishism|fetish]], then [[fetishism]] is clearly far more prevalent among [[women]] than among [[men]].
 +
 
 +
== In the work of Slavoj Žižek ==
 +
<blockquote>There is no unhappier creature under the sun than a [[fetishist]] who longs for a woman’s shoe but has to make do with the [[whole]] woman. (Kraus 2001: 13)</blockquote>Karl Kraus’s aphorism encapsulates a key element of the ''fetish'' – a disproportionate attachment to a [[particular]] ordering or [[structure]] of [[desire]]. The fetish can be viewed as a [[psychological]] version of the fi gure of [[speech]] known as synecdoche wherein a part is used to [[represent]] the whole. Excessive attachment to the part means that the fetishist “misses the bigger picture” – in Kraus’s example, obsessive longing for a shoe displaces appreciation of the whole woman. The standard [[understanding]] of the fetish has come to be dominated by connotations of [[sexual]] perversion (the fetishist [[needs]] rubber clothing, extreme [[pain]] or [[humiliation]], etc.), but the [[concept]] of ''[[fetishistic disavowal]]'' allows a wider understanding of the concept that enables important insights into contemporary [[ideological]] [[processes]] – the [[political]] implications and consequences of which reach well beyond the merely sexual.
 +
 
 +
Žižek frequently tells the story of a surprised visitor to the Danish nuclear physicist [[Niels Bohr]] who voiced disapproval when he saw a horse-shoe hanging above a door. Bohr replied: “I also do not believe in it; I have it there because I was told that it works also if one does not believe in it!” For Žižek, the story illustrates a crucial, paradoxical element of the way in which [[belief]] works. Belief is not a simple unilinear [[thing]]; rather, it is an innately reflexive phenomenon – it is possible to believe in belief itself as opposed to the normally supposed [[need]] for there to be a [[content]] of belief. Th e seventeenth-century [[French]] [[philosopher]] Blaise [[Pascal]] described the [[performative]] element of belief in relation to the [[Catholic]] [[Church]] with his [[injunction]] “Kneel down and you will believe!” but Žižek draws attention to the [[self]]-referential [[causality]] involved in such a performance: “Kneel down and you will believe that you knelt down because you believed!” (''PV'': 353).
 +
 
 +
The importance of the concept of [[fetishistic]] disavowal thus resides in what it says [[about]] the ideological implications of such [[self-referentiality]] – the combined [[terms]] fetishistic disavowal stem from an excessive adherence to certain beliefs and practices and a simultaneous [[denial]] of any genuine belief. To explain how this concept works in [[practice]], Žižek uses the example of [[Father]] Christmas and the way in which [[parents]] [[claim]] they promote the story only “for the sake of the children”. He argues that beyond the youngest and most naive infants, the majority of [[children]] [[know]] that Father Christmas does not [[exist]]. In [[reality]], the only [[people]] who truly believe in Santa Claus are the parents themselves! They pretend to pretend to believe, that is, in the guise of acting like [[knowing]] [[adults]] performing for innocent children, what really occurs is that adults hide behind a purported [[fantasy]] so that they do not have to confront their defining need to believe in the [[existence]] of innocent and guileless children – self-[[deception]] in the service of innocence!
 +
 
 +
Žižek’s [[theoretical]] insight regarding the [[notion]] of ''pretending to pretend to believe'' is that, whereas so-called “primitive” cultures develop [[working]] modes of [[symbolism]]/ideology embodied in social [[rituals]] and [[objects]], if pushed, their members retain the ability to maintain a healthy sceptical distance towards those practices. Primitives act at a social level as if they believe, but at an [[individual]] level they may in fact demur. By contrast, “advanced” [[media]] consumers are part of a generally cynical zeitgeist but, as individuals, tend to act with uncritical belief. The [[split]] [[nature]] of this cynical disavowal-structure is encapsulated in the phrase “''je sais bien, mais quand même …''” (“I know very well, but even so …”), and is manifested in media formats that facilitate the deliberate overlooking of obvious ideological questions. For example, the internationally franchised TV series ''[[Secret]] Millionaire'' is premised upon the presence of a millionaire pretending to be a non-wealthy volunteer working among underprivileged people, and relies upon both the revelation of the initial secret and the maintenance of a much more substantive secret that the format encourages neither the participants nor the audience to ask, namely, what sort of [[society]] allows such wealth disparity to exist in the first [[place]]? In contrast to the primitive’s [[rational]] practice of [[irrationality]] through objects like the [[totem]] pole, ''Secret Millionaire''’s audience unwittingly disavows through a fetishized [[screen]] more [[irrational]] than any totem pole the [[true]] secret it is watching – the systematically ideological nature of the docudrama format.
 +
 
 +
The movie ''Kung Fu Panda'' is for Žižek one of the purest representations of fetishistic disavowal. The film’s key [[message]] is that:<blockquote>“I know very well there is no special ingredient, but I nonetheless believe in it (and act accordingly)…” Cynical denunciation (at the level of rational [[knowledge]]) is counteracted by a call to “irrational” belief – and this is the most elementary [[formula]] of how [[ideology]] functions today. (“Hollywood Today”)</blockquote>Rather than merely a clever academic observation confined to the realm of [[cultural]] studies, the [[physical]] and hard-nosed [[economics]] of such cynical disavowal can be seen in Starbucks’ [[recent]] efforts to [[present]] elements of its franchise as independent, neighbourhood coffee shops:<blockquote>In a diversion from its usual mixture of stripped wood decor and bland artwork, Starbucks is opening a store in its home city of Seattle intended to [[capture]] the vibe of a beatnik coffee hangout – and disguise the fact that drinkers are in a Starbucks. Th e store will be called 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea in an [[apparent]] attempt to mimic a local, independent coffee shop. A Starbucks spokeswoman says the place will have a “mercantile” look with open bins of coffee beans and manual grinding machines. Th ere will be live [[music]] and [[poetry]] performances. At least two [[other]] re-hashed outlets are on the way in Seattle as chairman Howard Schultz tries pushing Starbucks back towards its artsy roots. Steve Gotham, an [[analyst]] at marketing consultancy Allegra Strategies, thinks this is a smart move as customers look for differentiation among branded coffee houses: “The issue of localness and local relevance has some way to go – it’s a consumer trend more operators need to tap into.” (Clark 2009)</blockquote>Both the marketing consultants and the customers availing themselves of the neo-mercantile atmosphere of carefully culturally re-engineered shops know that genuine “localness” and “local relevance” cannot be corporately generated, but proceed as if it can – the profitable exploitation of ''je sais bien, mais quand même''.
 +
 
 +
The archetypal examples of this kind of ideological operation are the notions of [[commodity]] fetishism and electronic/paper [[money]]. We pretend to believe that money made of paper/bytes is actually worth the physical goods we buy with it and that commodities have special non-physical properties. Thus, once again in a [[reversal]] of the [[primitive]] who publicly believes, but is privately cynical, although claiming that we do not really believe that brands are special, contemporary consumers nevertheless continue to routinely pay [[orders]] of magnitude above the [[material]] value of a T-shirt if it is adorned with a logo such as the Nike swoosh. Žižek’s key point is that [[conscious]] disavowal contradictorily co-[[exists]] with [[practical]] [[acts]] that embody belief.
 +
 
 +
At the level of belief, key capitalist [[ideas]] – commodities are animate; [[capital]] has a quasi-[[natural]] status – are repudiated, but it is precisely the ironic distance from such notions that allows us to act as if they are true. The disavowal of the beliefs allows us to perform the actions. Ideology, then, depends upon the conviction that what “really matters” is what we are, rather than what we do, and that “what we are” is defined by an “inner essence” (Fisher 2006).
 +
 
 +
Whereas the distance held towards his belief by the primitive is a conscious one, our disbelief is mediated by key capitalist mechanisms – the marketplace, the media – so that Kant’s subjectively [[objective]] (a reality [[interpreted]] by the subject) becomes the objectively [[subjective]] (the subject interpreted/interpellated by reality). “Although people may claim not to believe in the political [[system]], their inert [[cynicism]] only validates that system … the [[idea]] that the way we behave in society is determined by objective [[market]] forces rather than subjective beliefs” (Thornhill 2009). Th is introduces a significant degree of ambiguity to Rachel Dawes’s [[words]] at the end of ''[[Batman]] Begins'': “Bruce … deep down you may still be that same great kid you used to be. But it’s not who you are underneath … it’s what you do that defines you.”
 +
 
 +
==See Also==
 +
{{See}}
 +
* [[Castration]]
 +
* [[Disavowal]]
 +
||
 +
* [[Imaginary]]
 +
* [[Lack]]
 +
||
 +
* [[Mother]]
 +
* [[Perversion]]
 +
||
 +
* [[Phallus]]
 +
* [[Phobia]]
 +
||
 +
* [[Symbolic]]
 +
* [[Woman]]
 +
{{Also}}
 +
 
 +
==References==
 +
<references />
 +
 
 +
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
 +
[[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
 +
[[Category:Practice]]
 +
[[Category:Dictionary]]
 +
[[Category:Treatment]]
 +
[[Category:Sexuality]]
 +
[[Category:Imaginary]]
 +
[[Category:Symbolic]]
 +
[[Category:Concepts]]
 
[[Category:Terms]]
 
[[Category:Terms]]
[[Category:Concepts]]
+
[[Category:Edit]]
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
+
[[Category:Zizek Dictionary]]
 +
{{OK}}
 +
 
 +
__FORCETOC__

Latest revision as of 13:40, 13 October 2020

French: [[fétichisme]]

Definition

The term "fetish" first came into widespread use in the eighteenth century in the context of the study of "primitive religions", in which it denoted an inanimate object of worship.

In the nineteenth century, Marx borrowed the term to describe the way that, in capitalist societies, social relations assume the illusory form of relations between things ("commodity fetishism").

Perversion

It was Krafft-Ebing who, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, first applied the term to sexual behavior.

He defined fetishism as a sexual perversion in which sexual excitement is absolute dependent on the presence of a specific object (the fetish).

The fetish is usually an inanimate object such as a shoe or piece of underwear.

Sigmund Freud

Freud argued that fetishism (seen as an almost exclusively male perversion) originates in the child's horror of female castration.

Confronted with the mother's lack of a penis, the fetishist disavows this lack and finds an object (the fetish) as a symbolic substitute for the mother's missing penis.[1]

Jacques Lacan

In Lacan's first approach to the subject of fetishism, in 1956, he argues that fetishism is a particularly important area of study and bemoans its neglect by his contemporaries.

He stresses that the equivalence between the fetish and the maternal phallus can only be understood by reference to linguistic transformations, and not by reference to "vague analogies in the visual field" such as comparisons between fur and pubic hair."[2]

He cites Freud's analysis of the phrase "Glanz auf der Nase" as support for his argument.[3]

Penis and Phallus

In the following years, as Lacan develops his distinction between the penis and phallus, he emphasises that the fetish is a substitute for the latter, not the former.

Disavowal

Lacan also extends the mechanism of disavowal, making it the operation constitutive of perversion itself, and not just of the fetishistic perversion.

Male Perversion

However, he retains Freud's view that fetishism is an exclusively male perversion,[4] or at least extremely rare among women.[5]

Phobic Object

In the seminar of 1956-7, Lacan elaborates an important distinction between the fetish object and the phobic object; whereas the fetish is a symbolic substitute for the mother's missing phallus, the phobic object is an imaginary substitute for symbolic castration.

Preoedipal Triangle

Like all perversions, fetishism is rooted in the preoedipal triangle of mother-child-phallus.[6]

However, it is unique in that it involves both identification with mother and with the imaginary phallus; indeed, in fetishism, the subject oscillates between these two identifications.[7]

Women

Lacan's statement, in 1958, that the penis "takes on the value of a fetish" for heterosexual women raises a number of interesting questions.[8]

Firstly, it reverses Freud's views on fetishism; rather than the fetish being a symbolic substitute for the real penis, the real penis may itself become a fetish by substituting the woman's absent symbolic phallus.

Secondly, it undermines the claims (made by both Freud and Lacan) that fetishism is extremely rare among women; if the penis can be considered a fetish, then fetishism is clearly far more prevalent among women than among men.

In the work of Slavoj Žižek

There is no unhappier creature under the sun than a fetishist who longs for a woman’s shoe but has to make do with the whole woman. (Kraus 2001: 13)

Karl Kraus’s aphorism encapsulates a key element of the fetish – a disproportionate attachment to a particular ordering or structure of desire. The fetish can be viewed as a psychological version of the fi gure of speech known as synecdoche wherein a part is used to represent the whole. Excessive attachment to the part means that the fetishist “misses the bigger picture” – in Kraus’s example, obsessive longing for a shoe displaces appreciation of the whole woman. The standard understanding of the fetish has come to be dominated by connotations of sexual perversion (the fetishist needs rubber clothing, extreme pain or humiliation, etc.), but the concept of fetishistic disavowal allows a wider understanding of the concept that enables important insights into contemporary ideological processes – the political implications and consequences of which reach well beyond the merely sexual.

Žižek frequently tells the story of a surprised visitor to the Danish nuclear physicist Niels Bohr who voiced disapproval when he saw a horse-shoe hanging above a door. Bohr replied: “I also do not believe in it; I have it there because I was told that it works also if one does not believe in it!” For Žižek, the story illustrates a crucial, paradoxical element of the way in which belief works. Belief is not a simple unilinear thing; rather, it is an innately reflexive phenomenon – it is possible to believe in belief itself as opposed to the normally supposed need for there to be a content of belief. Th e seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal described the performative element of belief in relation to the Catholic Church with his injunction “Kneel down and you will believe!” but Žižek draws attention to the self-referential causality involved in such a performance: “Kneel down and you will believe that you knelt down because you believed!” (PV: 353).

The importance of the concept of fetishistic disavowal thus resides in what it says about the ideological implications of such self-referentiality – the combined terms fetishistic disavowal stem from an excessive adherence to certain beliefs and practices and a simultaneous denial of any genuine belief. To explain how this concept works in practice, Žižek uses the example of Father Christmas and the way in which parents claim they promote the story only “for the sake of the children”. He argues that beyond the youngest and most naive infants, the majority of children know that Father Christmas does not exist. In reality, the only people who truly believe in Santa Claus are the parents themselves! They pretend to pretend to believe, that is, in the guise of acting like knowing adults performing for innocent children, what really occurs is that adults hide behind a purported fantasy so that they do not have to confront their defining need to believe in the existence of innocent and guileless children – self-deception in the service of innocence!

Žižek’s theoretical insight regarding the notion of pretending to pretend to believe is that, whereas so-called “primitive” cultures develop working modes of symbolism/ideology embodied in social rituals and objects, if pushed, their members retain the ability to maintain a healthy sceptical distance towards those practices. Primitives act at a social level as if they believe, but at an individual level they may in fact demur. By contrast, “advanced” media consumers are part of a generally cynical zeitgeist but, as individuals, tend to act with uncritical belief. The split nature of this cynical disavowal-structure is encapsulated in the phrase “je sais bien, mais quand même …” (“I know very well, but even so …”), and is manifested in media formats that facilitate the deliberate overlooking of obvious ideological questions. For example, the internationally franchised TV series Secret Millionaire is premised upon the presence of a millionaire pretending to be a non-wealthy volunteer working among underprivileged people, and relies upon both the revelation of the initial secret and the maintenance of a much more substantive secret that the format encourages neither the participants nor the audience to ask, namely, what sort of society allows such wealth disparity to exist in the first place? In contrast to the primitive’s rational practice of irrationality through objects like the totem pole, Secret Millionaire’s audience unwittingly disavows through a fetishized screen more irrational than any totem pole the true secret it is watching – the systematically ideological nature of the docudrama format.

The movie Kung Fu Panda is for Žižek one of the purest representations of fetishistic disavowal. The film’s key message is that:

“I know very well there is no special ingredient, but I nonetheless believe in it (and act accordingly)…” Cynical denunciation (at the level of rational knowledge) is counteracted by a call to “irrational” belief – and this is the most elementary formula of how ideology functions today. (“Hollywood Today”)

Rather than merely a clever academic observation confined to the realm of cultural studies, the physical and hard-nosed economics of such cynical disavowal can be seen in Starbucks’ recent efforts to present elements of its franchise as independent, neighbourhood coffee shops:

In a diversion from its usual mixture of stripped wood decor and bland artwork, Starbucks is opening a store in its home city of Seattle intended to capture the vibe of a beatnik coffee hangout – and disguise the fact that drinkers are in a Starbucks. Th e store will be called 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea in an apparent attempt to mimic a local, independent coffee shop. A Starbucks spokeswoman says the place will have a “mercantile” look with open bins of coffee beans and manual grinding machines. Th ere will be live music and poetry performances. At least two other re-hashed outlets are on the way in Seattle as chairman Howard Schultz tries pushing Starbucks back towards its artsy roots. Steve Gotham, an analyst at marketing consultancy Allegra Strategies, thinks this is a smart move as customers look for differentiation among branded coffee houses: “The issue of localness and local relevance has some way to go – it’s a consumer trend more operators need to tap into.” (Clark 2009)

Both the marketing consultants and the customers availing themselves of the neo-mercantile atmosphere of carefully culturally re-engineered shops know that genuine “localness” and “local relevance” cannot be corporately generated, but proceed as if it can – the profitable exploitation of je sais bien, mais quand même.

The archetypal examples of this kind of ideological operation are the notions of commodity fetishism and electronic/paper money. We pretend to believe that money made of paper/bytes is actually worth the physical goods we buy with it and that commodities have special non-physical properties. Thus, once again in a reversal of the primitive who publicly believes, but is privately cynical, although claiming that we do not really believe that brands are special, contemporary consumers nevertheless continue to routinely pay orders of magnitude above the material value of a T-shirt if it is adorned with a logo such as the Nike swoosh. Žižek’s key point is that conscious disavowal contradictorily co-exists with practical acts that embody belief.

At the level of belief, key capitalist ideas – commodities are animate; capital has a quasi-natural status – are repudiated, but it is precisely the ironic distance from such notions that allows us to act as if they are true. The disavowal of the beliefs allows us to perform the actions. Ideology, then, depends upon the conviction that what “really matters” is what we are, rather than what we do, and that “what we are” is defined by an “inner essence” (Fisher 2006).

Whereas the distance held towards his belief by the primitive is a conscious one, our disbelief is mediated by key capitalist mechanisms – the marketplace, the media – so that Kant’s subjectively objective (a reality interpreted by the subject) becomes the objectively subjective (the subject interpreted/interpellated by reality). “Although people may claim not to believe in the political system, their inert cynicism only validates that system … the idea that the way we behave in society is determined by objective market forces rather than subjective beliefs” (Thornhill 2009). Th is introduces a significant degree of ambiguity to Rachel Dawes’s words at the end of Batman Begins: “Bruce … deep down you may still be that same great kid you used to be. But it’s not who you are underneath … it’s what you do that defines you.”

See Also

References

  1. Freud, Sigmund.. "Fetishism", 1927e. SE XXI, 149
  2. Lacan, Jacques. "Variantes de la cure-type", in Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. [1956b]. p. 267)
  3. Freud, Sigmund. "Fetishism", 1927e. SE XXI, 149
  4. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. p. 734
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