Fetishism, Psychoanalysis, and Philosophy: The Iridescent Thing

Based on a rigorous re-reading of Freud's text on fetishism, and on the fundamental psychic mechanism at its source, Verleugnung (disavowal), which simultaneously links belief and non-belief in an undesirable perception and the maintenance of a counter-belief, Alan Bass achieves the great feat of showing how all thinking about fetishism, (from de Brosses, through Comte, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and even Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty), remains haunted by this question. If fetishism in the strict sense takes the ersatz, the substitute, for the missing thing itself, every experience of substitution of one representation in the place of another--their distinction and their connection--clarifies the fundamental process of differentiation itself, of a thinking of difference (Derrida), and of the very process of symbolization. New consequences for the understanding and interpretation of any transference are given their full importance and are perfectly elucidated. -Rene Major, Director, Institute for Advanced Psychoanalytic Studies, Paris, France.

With great skill, the author plots his course through a dazzling array of writer and texts, although tht overall effect is not to register dispersion as much as to trace out complex and sometimes unexpected connections across a wide body of literary and philosophical work. In fact, the book is very well choreographed, bringing together those philosophical and literary voices with a great deal of elegance and poise. As much as it is an intellectually challenging book, it is also a highly readable one, and beautifully written -Simon Morgan Wortham, PVC Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Kingston University London.

Alan Bass's book provides an example of the finest comparatist work in the humanities and attests to the remarkable illumination that true interdisciplinary work can produce. I believe this unusual and provocative book will appeal to scholars of literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, as well as to historians and political theorists. The breadth of this book will make it a precious resource for students and teachers alike. It provides an invaluable rethinking of the extraordinary legacy to contemporary thinking that is the concept of fetishism. -Elizabeth Rottenberg, DePaul University.