Abstract
The word “fetish” derives from the Portuguese “feitiço” and, since it refers to cult objects of the so-called savage peoples, it may already be found in sixteenth-century accounts of the Portuguese voyages to West Africa.1 This word, in turn, comes from the Latin “facticius,” meaning artificial. As a noun, the word has also assumed the meaning of “witchcraft” and sorcery.2 Hence, it is a word with which Europeans originally indicated the indigenous cults of Guinea.
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Notes
See D. Vieira, Grande Diccionario Portuguez ou Thesouro da Lingua Portugueza, edited by Ernesto Chardron and Bartholomeu H. De Moraes, vol. III, Porto, 1873, p. 623. The word “feitiço” is to be found in J. Barros’s 1552 Década I (liv. 3, Chapter 10; liv. 8, Chapter 4, liv. 10, Chapter 1).
J. Lubbock, The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man, Longmans, London, 1870. Marx would quote Lubbock’s observations in his ethnological notebooks. See The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx, by L. Krader, Van Gorcum, Assen, 1974, pp. 342–343. As far as the absence of idols is concerned, the source is Lafitau.
J. F. McLennan, The Worship of Animals and Plants (1869), in Studies in Ancient History: The Second Series, MacmilLan, London, 1896.
J. F. Lafitau, Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times, edited by W. N. Fenton and E. L. Moore, 2 volumes, Toronto 1974, vol. I, p. 243.
M. Mauss, L’art et le mythe d’après M. Wundt (1908), in Oeuvres, vol. II, Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1969, p. 217.
On the concept of secuLarization, see G. Marramao, Potere e secoLarizzazione. Le categorie del tempo, Editori Riuniti, Rome, 1983.
On Lafitau see G. Chinard, L’Amérique et le rêve exotique dans La littérature française au XVII et au XVIII siècle, Hachette, Paris, 1913;
A. van Gennep, Religions, Moeurs et Légendes. Essais dethnographie et de linguistique, V série, Mercure de France, Paris, 1914, pp. 111–113; see also “Pro Ethnographie,” in Réligions, Moeurs et Légendes, III série, Société du Mercure de France, Paris, 1911;
A. Métraux, “Précurseurs de l’ethnologie en France du XVL au XVIII siècle,” in Cahiers d’histoire mondiale, vol. VII (1963), no. 3, pp. 721–738;
G. Hervé, “Débuts de l’Ethnographie au XVIII siècle (1701–1765), ” in Revue de l’Ecole d’anthropologie, November 1909, pp. 360–363;
M. Duchet, Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des lumières, FLammarion, Paris, 1971 and “Discours ethnologique et Discours historique: le texte de Lafitau,” in Studies on Voltaire andXVIIIth Century, vol. VLII (1976), pp. 607–623;
E. Lemay, “Histoire de Lantiquité et Découverte du Nouveau Monde chez le auteurs du XVIII siècle,” in Studies on Voltaire, vol. CLI–CLV, 1976, pp. 1313–1328;
M. T. Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, University of Pennsylvania Press, PhiLadelphia, 1964, pp. 348–349; P. Vidal Naquet, Le Cru, l’Enfant grec et le Cuit, in Faire de l’histoire, vol. II, Gallimard, Paris, 1974, pp. 137–168; S. Landucci, I filosof e i selvaggi (1580–1780), Laterza, Bari, 1972, pp. 247–262; W. N. Fenton—E. L. Moore’s “Introduction” to Customs of the American Indians, op. cit., vol. I; Detienne, L’invention de La mythologie, Gallimard, Paris, 1981; S. Moravia, La scienza dell’uomo nel Settecento, Laterza, Bari, 1978, pp. 146–148. See also F. Meinecke, Die Entstehung des Historismus.
See C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to locke, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962.
K. Polanyi, The Livelihood of Man, Academic Press, New York, 1977, by H. W. Pearson.
M. Mauss, “Essay sur le don,” in Sociologie et Anthropologie, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1950; The Gift, English edition first published in 1954 by Cohen & West.
E. Durkheim, Leçons de sociologie, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1950.
On Fontenelle and Hume, see also P. Bayle, Pensée écrites à un docteur de Sorbonne, à l’occasion de La comète qui paruit au mois de Décembre 1680, in Oeuvres diverses, La Haye (Trévoux), 1737, 2nd edition, vol. III, paragraph 65 (Italian transLation, pp. 120–121; on the issue concerning the several editions of the work, see the Editor’s note, vol. I, pp. VII-XVI). On Bayle and his influence, see E. Cassirer, La filosofia dell’ illuminismo, La Nuova Italia, Florence, 1973, p. 283. Spinoza and Toland associate fear with hope. On Spinoza, see footnote 8; J. Toland, Letters to Serena (1704), Italian transLation by E. Lecaldano, Laterza, Bari, 1977, p. 79; Adeisidaemon e Origines Judicae (1709), Italian transLation by A. Sabetti, Liguori, Naples, 1984. On Toland and Leclerc and the Relationship between a “primitive mentality” and the origins of religion,
see M. Iofrida, La filosofia di J. Toland, Angeli, MiLan, 1983, p. 74;
B. de Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits, edited by F. B. Kaye, Oxford, 1966, vol. II, p. 207.
See also M. E. Scribano, Natura umana e societa competitiva. Studio su Mandeville, Feltrinelli, MiLan, 1980, p. 21.
Bernard Fontenelle, On the Origin of Fables, in Burton Feldman and Robert D. Richardson, The Rise of Modern Mythology, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indianapolis, 1972, p. 16. For the important role pLayed by Fontenelle in the comparative method, see Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, London, 1887, 2 vol. edition, especially Appendix A in the second volume, “Fontenelle’s Forgotten Common Sense.” On the Relationship between myth and history in Fontenelle, see G. Cantelli, “Mito e storia in J. Leclerc, Tournemine e Fontenelle,” in Rivista critica di storia della filosofia, no. 3 and 4, 1972, especially pp. 391–399 of no. 4. On the concepts of history and system, see A. Pizzorusso, “Fontenelle e l’idea del progresso,” Belfagor, no. 2, 1962, pp. 150–180.
G. Canguilhem, “Histoire des religions et histoire des sciences dans La théorie du fétichisme chez Auguste Comte,” in Etudes d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences, Vrin, Paris, 1968, pp. 88–89.
D. Stewart, “Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith,” in A. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, London, 1853, vol. I, p. xxxv. On “conjectural history,” see G. Gusdorf, De l’histoire des sciences à l’histoire de La pensée, Payot, Paris, 1966, p. 79.
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© 2016 Alfonso Maurizio Iacono
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Iacono, A.M. (2016). The Theoretical and Historical Assumptions Underpinning the Concept of Fetishism. In: The History and Theory of Fetishism. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137541154_2
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