Fetishism for Our Times: A Rhetorical and Philosophical Exploration

Abstract

This article develops a detailed theory of the fetishes of the modern world. Fetishes may still have their original religious application as talismans and totems, but their actual range is much wider, as I illustrate. I show that a modern fetish satisfies our needs in an unexpected and unlikely manner: it does what it, prima facie, is not supposed to do. How does this happen? To explain, we must trace the construction of fetishes; I do this using some key rhetorical concepts. Paradiastole is a technique of evaluative redescription. It describes the world in value terms as something it is not—we can then ironize the result. If it serves the speakers’ essential interests and satisfies their desires, we have explained a fetish as a good-maker. The fetishization of an object, because of its ironic background, tends to invite critical, meiotic, and even derogatory responses—usually, the issue is and remains essentially contested. For example, early Christians wrote hagiographies that treated some people as saints, thus creating ad hoc beliefs that satisfied their religious interests. I also suggest a different, metonymic understanding of fetishes and their educational benefits. Perhaps my theory is overly permissive, allowing too many fetishes. My final conjecture is that true fetishes function as identity markers; for example, the crucifix is a fetish that defines Christianity.

Finally, Samson shared his secret with her. “My hair has never been cut”, he confessed, “for I was dedicated to God as a Nazirite from birth. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as anyone else”.

(Judges 16:17)

1. Fetishism, the Concept and the Controversy

Originally, fetish was a religious term in anthropology, meaning a material object that has magical good-making properties. Anthropologists looked at them from the outside and used their science to describe what they saw.1 Their linguistic framework was alien to the locals, who used their tradition-bound language to make sense of the objects they claimed satisfied their vital interests. It was not easy to see and comprehend how this happened—it was obviously non-obvious. However, the main methodological difficulty is approaching a context where the observers and their targets do not share a common belief system and linguistic framework. They live in two different worlds, and hence, when we call an object a fetish, they do not understand what it is. Non-participatory observation and theorizing are controversial methods, and their uses are limited. However, when we leave religious Indigenous cultures and focus on our modern world, we can argue that fetishists should be able to understand what we talk about and how we understand their relevant beliefs. They may have no excuse for not realizing how the logic of fetishization works and how it applies to some of their social constructs. Fetish is often a critical term, and criticism invites a response. At the same time, we must be careful not to allow an undue proliferation of fetishes—critical terms must be used only in critical cases.

In contemporary religion, the Catholic crucifix is a fetish. In the gun culture of the USA, handguns are fetishized. In sex research, a fetish is any non-sexual object as a source of sexual arousal. A standard example is a high-heeled black latex boot, but diapers may also work. We can characterize a fetish in two ways. The first one reflects the original anthropological notion: a fetish is a venerated object with good-making powers. It has hidden powers—however, this characterization looks odd: objects have all kinds of powers. Alcohol is a chemical solvent and medically a tranquilizer, but such hidden powers alone do not make it a fetish. Alcohol is, indeed, fetishized in some cultures. Some American Indian tribes drank alcohol to experience hangovers, which increased their mental sensitivity, thus bringing them closer to their gods. This religious ritual treated alcohol as a fetish. A fetish always has an imaginary aspect. Mutilated foot fetishism was a strange practice and problem in old China—in the West, foot play is common (Schwartz 1998).

Taboos and the Hawaiian kapu, in one of their meanings, are what we may call negative fetishes. To intervene with them meant punishment by death. They were forbidden things that, paradoxically, did not manifest their evil powers. Taboo originally was an object that unexplainably transformed into an evil fetish: keep evil things invisible and good things visible. Today, it is something repulsive (Kekes 1992).

I will use another construal of fetish. An object, as a fetish, transforms into something else that, in its novel form and role, is an imaginary good-maker that seems to satisfy certain interests and desires. We may also focus on the transmogrification of a piece of footwear into a sexual plaything and alcohol into a religious medium. We do not say the object has hidden powers—the fetish does not. Marx’s commodity fetishism is a well-known example: economically understood value changes into a powerful social fantasy (Hudson and Hudson 2003). Such changes depend on contextual and cultural logic and thus are unlike idiosyncratic madness. A fetish presupposes a community of believers that forms the relevant audience. Idiosyncratic desire satisfaction is deviant behavior, which, for instance, sexual fetishism is not, whatever the traditional authorities might say. They variously attack and cure an individual, but the issue is cultural. Therefore, to identify fetishism is possible only if the key ideas are shared—if they are not, we do not know what they are. However, we must not commit the Typical Mind Fallacy by believing all our shared desires and interests are uniform (Berman 2022, p. 106). They are not, although we have a hard time imagining pleasures different from ours, yet they provide a foundation for fetishism. To draw a line between normal and abnormal cases is difficult.

We need rhetorical concepts, irony, paradiastole, prolepsis, and meiosis/hyperbole. This is another way of saying that we approach fetishism as a cultural construct that we re-interpret to understand the riddle of its powers critically. Only those who belong to the relevant linguistic culture and participate in it possess its fetishes; others form an audience who know the fetishes only by description. Fetishists possess knowledge by acquaintance. People play with fetishes, although they may not see and recognize them. We see other people’s fetishes—they may not. They tend to dismiss them, leading to a non-standard subtype of knowledge by acquaintance: they know but don’t know what they know. They know but under a perplexing linguistic description. They are familiar with fetishes in a way that outsiders do not share; thus, they describe something mysterious. However, when it is our turn to call our pet fetish a fetish, we may struggle. Perhaps we cannot accept the term’s critical force. Such convoluted discursive dialectic seems to depend on the meiotic nature of the observer’s language of fetishism.

A crucial difference between fetishists and their critical audience depends on the latter’s ability and willingness to recognize the essential ironic aspects of fetishization. Fetishists think at the factual level, which is impossible for their audiences who lean on rhetorical criticism. They may not see its ironies when they apply the crucifix to keep demons at bay. This serves their interests, and they believe it works. When you fondle an eroticized shoe, your arousal is real and satisfying and has nothing to do with irrational trust and wishful thinking. Outsiders wonder what is going on and how to understand all this. What tools do we need? The problem with sexual fetishes is that their effects are not imaginary but real. They work. Are they fetishes in the standard sense? I suggest the following. A sexual fetish is an imaginary sexual stimulant, and therefore, its effects are sexual in an imaginary sense. Fetishistic arousal is analogous to sexual arousal and thus contains a fictive element. This applies to SM as well. Pain as pleasure cannot be the real thing.

Understanding is not like scientific explanation. I doubt whether an explanation is possible because fetishes are critical linguistic constructs certain audiences use in special contexts. We need an idiographic approach. As imaginary constructs, fetishes are difficult because of their normativity and definitional fuzziness. They can be narrated but not defined, to say nothing of operationalization. For example, no one can define sexual fetish, but conservative audiences still use the term with confidence under rubrics like deviant sexuality and paraphilia. The idea of a fetish invites narration. I suggest using rhetorical terms.

2. A Rhetorical Approach to Fetishization

2.1. The Ironies of Paradiastole

We can understand fetishization in terms of paradiastole. Paradiastole has various characterizations in dictionaries, for example, “A rhetorical figure in which a gloss or spin is put on a report, particularly by using an expression which suggests only part of the truth” (www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100305667 (accessed on 29 May 2024). A fetish results when an object transforms into something else whose use and capacities look enigmatic to its critical audiences. Therefore, we ironize the paradiastole; in other words, if we can ironize the transformation, we may call the result a fetish. The British satirist Bernard Mandeville’s social philosophy utilized rhetorical figures like hyperbole, climax, and paradiastole (Douglass 2023). The title of his masterwork tells it all: The Fable of the Bees. Or, Private Vices Public Benefits (Mandeville [1714] 1989). Vices become virtues and crimes beneficial. His parody focuses on the benefits of vice, which is a prime example of fully ironized paradiastole:

• Thus, every part was full of vice, 155
• Yet the whole mass a paradise;
• Flatter’d in peace, and fear’d in wars
• They were th’ esteem of foreigners,
• And lavish of their wealth and lives,
• The balance of all other hives. 160
• Such were the blessings of that state;
• Their crimes conspir’d to make them great;
• And virtue, who from politics
• Has learn’d a thousand cunning tricks,
• Was, by their happy influence, 165
• Made friends with vice: And ever since
• The worst of all the multitude
• Did something for the common good.

In rhetoric, prolepsis allows us to anticipate and cope with objections and other difficulties of argumentation as if beforehand. In fetishization, one must be ready to counter critical reactions. This is to say that we expect wording that may cope with anticipated criticism and rejection. Look at the last couplet of the poem above: “The worst of all the multitude/Did something for the common good”. The poet could have said everything, which is hyperbole; instead, he uses meiosis, which has a proleptic effect that dilutes criticism, which itself is prone to hyperbole. However, the poet has already used hyperbole: “Their crimes conspir’d to make them great” (162). Many contemporary readers, like George Berkeley, found all this disturbing (Berkeley 1732, Second Dialogue).

Suppose an Object transmogrifies into a Fetish that the skeptics read ironically in terms of paradiastole and prolepsis. What is involved? What kind of cases and alternatives do we find? A fetish is a cultural construct that people are motivated to create via language and rhetoric. Rhetoric influences people, and language contains a performative aspect that alters and not only describes our lifeworld when fetishization turns an Object into a Fetish—proleptic paradiastole rules. This transformation generates a conceptual gap that we can ironize. We also specify the imaginary interest the fetish serves, and that is all.

A kinky person meets a black, high-heeled latex boot and feels the urge to turn the boot into something that satisfies his desire (Airaksinen 2023). Fetishization follows when he applies the proleptic trope, thinking, “Good grief, this will prove to be something else”. Next, he turns to paradiastole, which transforms the object into something that, after ironization, is a fetish. The relevant transformation adds value to facts: a boot becomes desirable in a novel and exceptional manner. He says, “I love you baby, come to me—we can do wonderful things together”. The boot is now a love object. However, because his audience may fail to see the point of giving the boot such a role, they ironize it. They see situational irony here and may continue with verbal irony: “I don’t think he should worry about contraception” (Airaksinen 2020).

A kinky person can understand and accept the paradiastole but not necessarily its irony, which separates the two audiences; one sees a love object, unlike the other, who focuses on the irony of the transformation. In this sense, fetishism is an essentially contested topic. The deadly sin of conservative moralists is that they cannot see through the rhetoric of the transformation—and its ironies—but take it literally. Notice that even the vagina is a fetish if its status as a love object depends on an ironized paradiastole, which entails a relevant transformation. Narratives of that kind are easy to invent. A male homosexual applies paradiastole to change the female body part, the vagina, into a love object and the target that promises gratification of sexual desire. This has its ironies when we think of the homosexual male. For him, as a heterosexual sees it, the vagina turns out to be a fetish.

2.2. Objective Considerations

When an Object turns into a Fetish, we can ask about its complexity. Think of the object. How clear and obvious is the object in its proleptic role that anticipates a fetish? Marx defines commodity fetish as follows. However, as we will see, his account only suggests a fetish without satisfying its analytical requirements:

[T]he commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labour, within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising out of this. It is nothing but the definite social relation, between men, themselves, which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things. The commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labour, within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising out of this. It is nothing but the definite social relation, between men, themselves, which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things. Therefore, to find an analogy, we must take flight into the misty realm of religion.

(Marx 1867, Part 1, Sec. 4)

Only a specialist in Marx’s economic theory can fully appreciate this; for others, it will remain fuzzy (Hudson and Hudson 2003; Ripstein 1987). His allusions to religious fetishism do not help much because, in that field, unlike in Marx’s economics, we can identify the common desire for the good-making effects of fetishes. For Marx, fetish production is, in capitalism, systemic and spontaneous. Marx is ironic when he talks about “the misty realm of religion” and the “fantastic form of a relation between things”. In this way, he emphasizes the inherent ironies of the relevant paradiastole. He writes critically—a fetish for him indicates a lack of logic and represents atavistic thinking. Compare this with the anecdotal Indians and their unanticipated use of alcohol for religious purposes: the object is now clear, simple, and obvious, just like the high-heeled latex boot.

A photo of a West African marketplace shows good-making fetishes. The variety is amazing, ranging from animal sculls to crooked tree branches. Such objects are semi-defined. What makes them objects of fetishization looks like a mystery to outsiders. We ask, what exactly qualifies them first as objects and then as fetishes?

Next, we ask about the distance between an object and a fetish. This varies from obvious to mysterious. The Indians’ spiritual application of alcohol is far from its chemical account, while the crucifix is, by its definition, a fetish. This object is not something we find outside the Catholic religious context, and it is something they made to work as a fetish—they needed one—and therefore, the object and the fetish are so close to each other that their distance is minimal. Some special Orthodox icons are worshipped as miracle-makers. They are fetishes, unlike most icons. Such selectiveness indicates a longer distance between the object and the fetish.

What about “Fountain”, which is Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made sculpture (1917)? It is an old porcelain urinal signed by R. Mutt. The Art Institute of Chicago calls Duchamp an artist and provocateur:

[Duchamp] wanted something beyond what he called “retinal art”, art that was meant to simply please the eye with colors, textures, and exotic subjects. Instead, he sought to “put painting once again at the service of the mind”.

(www.artic.edu/articles/698/marcel-duchamps-bottle-rack (accessed on 29 May 2024))

The provocateur changed a ready-made object into art by simply calling it art in the Pickwickian sense and placing it successfully in an art exhibition, thus confirming its status as art. However, at the same time, he may have created a fetish (Belting 1998; Wikström 2023). Fine art objects are not fetishes as long as they are “retinal art” but “at the service of the mind” they transform into something different. First, the urinal and his other creation, a ready-made bottle rack, which the artist named Bottle Rack (1914), are sarcastic comments on the established art scene at the beginning of the 21st century. They are anti-art. Secondly, traditional artists create art objects that, as such, are untouched by the paradiastole. They do not change when we view them as art objects—they are art objects. Hence, we find no room for irony. Art is art and no other thing. However, in Duchamp’s case, the two ready-made objects transformed into fine art and, at the same time, gained their fetishist interpretation. We can sense here a long distance between the object and the fetish; that is, between the urinal and fine art. Much innovation and persuasive ingenuity go into this paradiastole, whose results were originally beyond any prolepsis. Also, the result is meiotic: the epithet of fine art may not apply to it, and therefore, the whole idea becomes suspect. The end of art is near when art is fetishized.

Duchamp’s urinal in an art gallery sends a dramatic message to its audience. It says, I do not belong here—enjoy my being here. As an art object, it over-extends from what it really is. It is ready-made toilet equipment, which, in its new role in the show, satisfies aesthetic interest only because it is a fetish. The urinal as an art object reflects certain special features of art and builds another object they can call art. What is this feature: the urinal sits in an art gallery. Once the audience sees it in this way, they have no reason to try to reject it and deny its creator’s genius. To call it a fetish now entails no criticism. We struggle to understand how and why an object’s fetishistic nature makes the fetish acceptable—what is its proleptic actor? Duchamp’s irony is a joke; thus, we can relax and laugh. However, his ready-mades were not well-received by audiences for some time, as it seems, and have been controversial to this time.

2.3. Desires and Interests

A fetish serves imaginary desires. Religious fetishes seemingly satisfy all kinds of desires, from sacred and metaphysical to mundane. These universal fetishes work as panaceas when they serve generalized imaginary interests. Some fetishes are strictly specified, like the eroticized shoe, which satisfies a need for sexual stimulation, and the secondary one concerning the partners’ arousal. Some fetishes are simple, and some are complex and fuzzy. Think of hagiographies, which are fetishized biographies (Butler 2005).

[H]agiography, the body of literature describing the lives and veneration of the Christian saints. The literature of hagiography embraces acts of the martyrs (i.e., accounts of their trials and deaths); biographies of saintly monks, bishops, princes, or virgins; and accounts of miracles connected with saints’ tombs, relics, icons, or statues.

(www.britannica.com/topic/hagiography (accessed on 29 May 2024))

The hagiographical tradition is more varied than this, but it fetishizes its objects, which should be clear to its intended audiences. Political movements like Soviet Communism have fetishized their unholy prophets, like V.I. Lenin. Stalin’s cult vanished after he died in 1953, but it may now continue.

A philosophical example is George Berkeley, of whom his London friend Alexander Pope said, “Every virtue under heaven to Berkeley”. He was an ambitious and aggressive Anglican dean and bishop who has enjoyed a high reputation ever since (Airaksinen and Gylling 2017). Perhaps satirist Pope spoke with gentle irony; nevertheless, the admirers of his philosophy have always taken Pope literally. Berkeley must have realized that these words were splendidly exaggerated—hyperbolic. Pope plays the rhetorical game. Perhaps he meant paradiastole, but we cannot tell. Berkeley’s, in many ways problematic, philosophical writings have earned the same kind of meiotic hagiographical treatment. For example, scholars have systematically dismissed his sermons and other minor writings, although his collected works include them because they do not fit his idealized literary portrait. Also, they reject his medico–metaphysical treatise, Siris (Berkeley 1744), which they think is scandalous. In its own time, it was Berkeley’s most successful book. He now rejects his youthful empiricism and immaterialism and becomes a hard-core Platonist. Such a truncated picture of a great man hints at a hagiographical fetish. The admirers ad hoc selected the material they wanted to admire and enjoy.

A hagiography reports a truncated truth and openly celebrates it. Here, meiosis leads to hyperbole. To aim at a partial and even partisan truth is a situationally ironic idea. Partisan truth is a weird notion, an oxymoron, much used and admired, for example, by Stalinist communists all over the world. The human being vanishes, and a miraculous one with superhuman properties arrives, just as the party wants. Verbal irony is obvious when we talk about a struggling and anxious individual in terms of how perfect her life can be. All of this results in a fetishistic narrative. What are their targeted interests and desires? I suggest willing submissiveness to political and canonical power and the common human desire to see and worship something elevated and more noble. Regardless of the answer, it seems obvious that hagiographies are wanted, admired, and utilized, especially in education. They offer their audiences a royal road to something more magnificent than they themselves can ever hope to be. Today, people admire pop singers and film stars for the very same reason. They are modern hagiographic models despite their obvious vices and imperfections. Their admirers may admit this, but they view them through hagiographical lenses, which again entails using a paradiastole and may lead to fetishization.

Fetishistic desire satisfaction is not real, yet fetishes are efficient. Certain fetishes are strictly belief-based desire satisfiers. They satisfy the believers’ expectations regardless of what happens. They see what they want to see. We must consider the viability of desire satisfaction; why is it imagined, trusted, and not real? Why is it efficient? Not all fetishes are the same. They work in three different ways: first, they seem to satisfy a specific desire in a way that can be scientifically verified (sex fetishes); second, believers (falsely) believe that their fetishes satisfy their desires in a verifiable manner (religious fetishes); third, they satisfy the fetishists’ more abstract interest, which we need not doubt (anti-art, hagiographies). We have specific and efficient, false and idle, and generalized but targeted fetishes. All fetishes promise satisfaction, and hence, they work for the believer.

For example, in the early modern period, universal medicines, also called catholicons and panacea, promised health to everyone; their description utilizes paradiastole, and the result of this is ironic in a way that justifies the epithet fetish. A good example is Berkeley’s tar water, produced by mixing pine tar and water (Berkeley 1744). Tar does not dissolve in water, so the result is, after removing the lump of tar from the water, a bucketful of brownish, sweet-smelling water. A patient drank copious amounts of this potion for several days. The resulting cure was explained by complex metaphysical reasoning and verified by asking how the patient felt before and after. The reports were uniformly encouraging, verified by the inventor healing himself. Pine tar has traditional external applications with negligible negative health effects (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5434829/ (accessed on 29 May 2024)).

One can buy pine tar in Finland, but the bottle carries the poison warning symbol. Berkeley’s tar water cannot have any verifiable, positive health effects, yet users reported benefits. Tar water satisfied an important need and desire, although its effects were imaginary. People trusted tar water and viewed their health accordingly. Tar water was also fashionable outside of Ireland, but the fad vanished quickly. Compare this with the history of medication against scurvy, which made long sea voyages so risky. All kinds of substances were tried until James Lind found a cure; vitamin C prevents, stops, and cures scurvy (Brown 2005). This has no fetishistic implications as long as the medication has something like a scientific foundation. Unlike vitamin C, tar turned water into a miracle cure.

Many desires and their satisfaction remain ambiguous and questionable. What desires do Duchamp’s urinal and bottle rack satisfy when they shake the fine arts community? These simple and ugly ready-made objects transform art as if by miraculous trickery. They represent anti-art, which mocks the expert artistic craft and skill, although they do not spell the end of art. Can we find the relevant desire? Their audience enjoys the items’ destructive effects and new artistic possibilities. Did they always want to mock the then-established idea of fine art? Or did these objects now seen in the art gallery create the very desire they satisfy? Duchamp’s greatest possible achievement would have been creating a desire to ridicule fine art, which his audience experiences for the first time and, at the same time, finds satisfying. Satisfaction may not mean the desire is thereby extinguished. The audience may feel good about the art in the gallery, and their need and desire to see something new is satisfied. At the same time, they realize they want to get more of this. Please give us something even wilder and more revolutionary! Anyway, a desire is a necessary component of fetish construction, although it is often difficult to see and specify.

2.4. Risky Fetishes

Fetishization can be costly and risky, even dangerous. Sexual fetishism is once again a good example. People they called sexual perverts used to be fair game for politicians, lawmakers, psychiatrists, and the clergy. Sexual fetishes and their worshippers were vulnerable and helpless against their sworn cruel enemies in psychiatry, law, and religion. They were perverts condemned as criminals and sinners. What could they do but hide? Today, those professionals try their best to forget and deny their past sins, however hard it may be. Kinky fetishism is still a dark corner of human sexuality, but it is also fashionable. The degree of repression was serious to a degree that is difficult to understand today, although today’s cultural atmosphere is far from permissive. In liberal countries, authorities flirt with the conclusion that people are different—recall the Typical Mind Fallacy—and have equal rights to self-expression and satisfaction. Such a kinky desire as bestiality, or to use the traditional term sodomy, was punishable by death (Levy 2003). It was common in the countryside in the 19th century, regardless of what Arthur Schopenhauer has to say about it:

Bestiality, again, is of infrequent occurrence; it is thoroughly abnormal and exceptional and so loathsome and foreign to human nature that it, better than all arguments of reason, passes judgment on itself, and deters by sheer disgust.

(Schopenhauer [1860] 2015, p. 20)

Desires are an obvious and varied source of risk, but fetishes are also dangerous in other ways. Some fetishes, because they are what they are, may bring about serious collective harm. Politics has its fetishistic elements. Suppose a dictator emerges. She is depicted by paradiastole and hyperbole; her good-making aims and claims are typically fantastic, allowing ironies to the degree that results in fetishization. The dictator is now a popular fetish worshipped by her audience while feared and loathed by others. Like a religious fetish, a dictator possesses nearly magical good-making powers that she promises to use to benefit the believers. The audience’s relevant desires vary, but all are hopeful and expectant. Here, the dominant rhetorical trope is prolepsis: tomorrow, everything is better; after we liquidate our enemies—the unintended audience—we are free to follow our leader to the promised land. Such political passions and desires are immediately dangerous to outsiders and problematic for the believers in the long run. We may speak of proximal and distal dangers. As I said above, the relevant desires may be benevolent, but the dictator herself—the fetish—is dangerous. She has too much power, and thus, a necessary condition of predictable behavior is not there. Any use of prolepsis becomes speculative and provisional. For example, Stalin killed his supporters as well as enemies. His paranoia made him predictably unpredictable. No one knew what Hitler wanted when he came to power: he wanted war. His antisemitism was obvious, but that vice was prevalent at that time, and nobody was worried. His popular audience was surprised when he led the nation to war but could do nothing. It was too late because a fetish lives in an independent reality beyond the control of facts and values. A fetish is an imaginary object, and as far as we treat a politician as a fetish, we cannot control her.

We can apply the idea of a harmful fetish in social criticism and political debate as follows. I present a detailed empirical case and apply the present theory to it. The question is, who wants the fetish, and who does not? What fetishes should we buy? In some cases, they need to sell the fetishized object to its potential audience. In other cases, this is not necessary or is no longer necessary. One way of selling is to use arguments, but often, an emotion-based approach works better. Today, national border security is a deeply emotional political issue. Border security becomes fetishized as follows. In international airports, countries like the USA strictly and emphatically control foreigners’ identities and backgrounds, although the southern land border may leak. The northern border is seldom mentioned. They control what they can. The US system fetishizes border security and then sells the results to a sympathetic audience on sentimental grounds. The country is under threat. Evil forces try to penetrate the borders. Anyone can be a deadly terrorist. Illegal aliens come and pollute our holy Christian culture and void its traditional virtues. They eat cats and dogs. All of this concerns you, the good citizen. In the US, a Luddist anti-technological argument keeps the status quo of border controls. It states that only expert human decision-making based on document inspection, facial recognition, and verbal interviews is sufficiently reliable to produce valid results. Robots are unreliable. This is ad hoc, although it may sound acceptable. In this game, the passenger’s suffering does not matter, or perhaps it matters because suffering is a key part of the ritual. The lines are long, and the customers’ discomfort is close to maximal. There was a time when the waiting room personnel was aggressively nasty, but then the room started displaying signs that the personnel loved their customers, thus reducing the plain fear factor. Such obvious prolepsis adds to the irony of the case.

We need a paradiastole. We see how they glorify security and surveillance in a reduced form based on ad hoc Luddist arguments. They say the system works best when it is as it is now, although, for instance, the Australian example shows they are wrong. The paradiastole glorifies a bad system, calling the old-fashioned system—groundlessly—the only possible and the best available. This security concept is a fetish sold to the public, above all to the passenger. If they are rational, they admit that border controls are necessary and justified, but this does not mean they should buy the security fetishism whose benefits are illusory and whose foundations are sentimental.

2.5. Fetishes and Desires De Dicto and De Se

Samson’s head hair is a token that incites de dicto beliefs and desires.2 Long hair as the power source is a fetish shared by many. It does matter who you choose because the conclusion is always the same. The same applies to hagiographies. They all work equally well. Think of an SM player and his latex shoe: he throws away the old pair when a new one becomes available—they all work equally well. A woman wants a man with a long head of hair. If she is a fetishist, she leaves him when he loses it or a longer hair becomes available. If she is not, she may not do so; hence, we read the case de re. We can read all fetishes this way and thus conclude that they are de dicto. What happens if Samson’s hair is unique? We need to use a contrary-to-fact conditional, which applies to unique cases like some icons. Suppose Samson’s head hair is of the type exemplified by one individual.

If additional Samsonian heads of hair existed, they all would have the same power and be equally desirable.

Let us ask, are fetishistic desires de se? I argue that one’s expected de se good makes a fetishist. Fetishism is all about desires. We can read desire-satisfying objects de dicto and de se. Such fetishes as handguns and crucifixes are de dicto. When we say, “Your gun makes you a true American”, we must read this de dicto because it does not matter which gun you have. They are all the same. You need not stay faithful de re to a particular gun, like some collectors do, to worship guns.

We can distinguish between four different classes of people as epistemic subjects and linguistic agents: those who have no fetishes but know what fetishes are (type 1); those who have fetishes and know what fetishes are (type 2); those who have no fetishes and do not know what fetishes are (type 3); and those who have fetishes but do not know what fetishes are (type 4). Let us take an example:

We must allow ourselves to be human and to make mistakes. For far too long, I fetishized suffering of my forbears, of han, of immigrant life. I told myself that suffering was central to Korean-American identity, that it was my heritage and my superpower.

(Lee 2023, p. 200)

Julia Lee belonged to type 4 but became type 1. She now knows fetishes by description and acquaintance. Most type 1 people know fetishes by description only. Type 2 people know fetishes qua fetishes by acquaintance. Type 4 people know fetishes by acquaintance without knowing what they know—this is a special version of knowledge by acquaintance. You need not know what you know when you know. You know a fetish, although you don’t know that it is a fetish. What do people of the types 2 and 4 believe? They believe that something, T, benefits them when they treat it right; for example, they revere it, but most of all, it benefits them and, thus, is a good-maker. Some people learn that T is a fetish; others do not. Why should they know the name fetish? The only important thing is that they believe T has a good effect on their lives. They trust T. Perhaps they worship it, but only as long as it works for them. At some point, Lee stopped believing that suffering would benefit her life. She saw through the ironies of the paradiastole that was the foundation of her fetish. I will discuss the thesis that only if T benefits people do they elevate it into a fetish—even without calling it thus. These benefits must belong to me. They must serve me, and thus, they are de se. One always says: “T brings good to me”. If they benefit others and exclude me, they are not my fetishes. Lee notices that her fetish, suffering, is no longer good to her—she may not consider its effects on others.

My fetishistic desires concern me as a speaker and believer. I worship our Beloved Leader; to the outsiders, he is a dictator, and we, his supporters, are fetishists. Suppose he imprisoned me, and now I suffer. Am I no longer a fetishist? It depends. I may think my imprisonment was an error. If I think that he had a good reason—unbeknownst to me—and he has the right to keep me in darkness, I still am a fetishist. The Beloved Leader is still my leader, even if he hurts me. This example shows why the desire theory may be problematic. The leader is important to me regardless of my fate. I want him. He is still my Beloved Leader. Compare this with Job (Book of Job 1:19–21):

And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee./Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,/And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord./In all this Job sinned not nor charged God foolishly.

What do we mean by being important to me? In the fetishistic context, only de se desires are important; thus, one cannot love an agent who fails to satisfy me. But Job remains a fetishist, and so does Socrates, who loved the City of Athens regardless of how they mistreated him. What looks, to the audience, as broken promises, failed covenants, and undesirable results were, for a fetishist like Job, acceptable ad hoc. God harmed Job, who did not complain. His immediate de se desires may have failed, but his higher-order desire to stay in contact with God stayed intact. Whatever God did to Job was de se desirable to him. All such desires are ad hoc. He says, “Lord hath taken away”, which does not shake his faith. Nothing can shake it. “Naked shall I return to thither” works as prolepsis.

The conclusion is that a fetishist focuses on de se desires that tend to be ad hoc. The believers desire what they get because they do not want to feel disappointed. To get what you desire may be too much to ask. Hence, you transcend such a narrow outlook and love and depend on something of higher value you want to satisfy. Socrates and Job are examples of this. If they were disappointed, they would not be fetishists. They were not.

A fetish cannot satisfy the desires of other people and leave my de se desires aside. We incorporate de se beliefs and desires when we introduce a fetish into the context. I must believe he is still my Dear Leader, come what may, or our leader, and we will stand together till the bitter end—even to my end. This applies to sexual fetishes, which they defend till the end, however illegal and condemned their desires have been. Think of the gun fetishists in the USA. They say they defend their right to carry a gun as far as needed, even to death. They do not mean the gun rights as such but, specifically, my right to carry a firearm. Such fetishes are de se.

Fetishes have religious overtones that are analogous to sacred feelings. This hints at their holistic role in a fetishist’s life. They are essential to one’s personality, style, and self-image. Such a holistic idea of importance can be measured by testing the subject’s willingness to suffer losses to protect his fetish. Please think of the patriot and his idea of a fatherland that wants your blood and life in a hopeless war effort, which you willingly provide. Fatherland, in many of its interpretations, is a fetish resulting from a complicated series of paradiastoles that implies a prolepsis of suffering and early but heroic death. This fetish is all about heroism, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom turned into something noble and, therefore, desirable. People join the army for glory, but all that hyperbole should have lit the red warning light. However, to ironize this even to audiences that are far from fetishistic can be painfully difficult. I argued that fetishistic desires must be de se—what are the patriot’s desires like? If he thinks the war will harm him, he is not a fetishist. If he wants to give everything to the war, he is a fetishist. Our patriot is a hero who suffers and dies willingly for the Leader. He may die, but he is not harmed. Such differences may look artificial and unconvincing, which shows that the idea of fetishism does not apply too smoothly to these negative cases. Perhaps too much depends on the narrative background and its interpretation.

2.6. Fetishes as Metonyms

Sexual fetishists of type 2 are, of course, explicit about their preferences and know what they are, unlike most other fetishists. A caveat applies here: people, women as well as men, tend to have some fetishist preferences and beliefs, but this does not make them fetishists. Only if fetishes loom too large in their life are they fetishists. This aspect of their thinking may not be obvious and is also difficult to admit when revealed—this may depend on the critical nature of the context, which follows from the ironies involved. Because of this, fetishistic preferences can sound overtly negative and sometimes even contemptible. To avoid this, we may turn away from the stepwise construction of fetishes from ironized paradiastole and discuss fetishes in terms of metonymy, a type of metaphor. This approach is commendable as it is less critical, uncontroversial, simpler, and perhaps more obvious. We may admit that fetishes are metonymic, but we must also explain why we may say so. Not all metonyms are the same.

Linguistically, fetishes are metonymic. I suggest the following rule: To create a fetishist metonym, pick and utilize such imaginary properties of the base that best serve the agent’s hopes, interests, and desires. This makes the metonym construction ad hoc. The Cambridge Dictionary defines metonymy as “referring to something using a word that describes one of its qualities or features”. This applies nicely to fetishes. When fetishizing an object, we use ad hoc one or more of its more or less imaginary good-making features to create its metonymic image, which is a meiotic mimetic double. Metonyms are like mirrors that reflect selectively. Diapers are a baby care product that becomes sexualized by kinky imagination that simulates them partly. Diapers are now called a sexual fetish based on a selection of their qualities—exactly what those qualities are is a moot question. Think of a full body and head covering black rubber outfit that is tailor-made to be a sexual fetish. What is it a metonym of? Can we find its basis? Technically, we have an outfit that we then fetishize, even though no one ever used it as an outfit. This metonymic derivation may look artificial, although technically valid. A fetishist could, I suppose, explain what aspects of the rubber outfit are sexually arousing—but this does not concern us here. The explanation will focus on a limited selection of the features of the outfit. This selection satisfies my sexual desire and is, therefore, a de se good.

Think of the crucifix as a holy symbol turned into a fetish. The same applies to Orthodox icons that were originally blessed paintings without fetishistic features. In this case, the base property is their god-appeasing holiness that becomes a good-making fetish. The fetish is a metonymic development of a holy object. Hagiographies turn a person into a saint. Here, the real person, whatever he has been, becomes a saint and a fetish when we focus specifically on her virtues. In all these cases, we find an object whose special properties are turned into a fetish so that linguistically, the fetish is the metonym of the base object.

I have already classified people into types 1 and 2. How do they come to know that a given metonym is fetishistic? What does a person miss when they do not recognize a fetish? They read a hagiographical account of Baruch Spinoza and think this is the real person described as he is warts and all (Burma 2024). Such mistakes are common in everyday understanding, however misleading they are. Millions believed that Lenin and Stalin were blameless heroes and secular saints. How and why this happens is a psychological problem, unlike the explanation of why and how type 1 and 2 people understand what is happening. They could distinguish different uses of metonyms so that they would not confuse Lenin, the man, and his metonymic image based on his miraculous success as a Bolshevik revolutionary and Stalin—a demiurge—as a god-like creator of the mighty Soviet Union from nothing. They recognize metonyms that, in their peculiar manner, close the gap between the properties of Stalin, the man, and his image based on some of his selected properties. They see through the ad hoc attempt to create an idol from his chosen properties in a way that creates a metonym that pleases by serving de se interests and desires. The key term here is ad hoc construction. People choose those properties that serve their interests and subdue the rest. The result is a meiotic mimetic image, which hyperbolically affects the believer. However, in these political cases, we may ask whether type 2 persons are viable. One can argue that seeing the image of Stalin as a fetish kills the fetish. Stalin stops being a demiurge. Certainly, we can enjoy hagiographies. We know our Berkeley (Airaksinen and Gylling 2017) and Spinoza (Burma 2024) have fetishistic features, but we may not know how to approach them otherwise.

Educational systems and programs should pay attention and try to broaden people’s awareness using type 1 and type 2 people as models. Critical thinking should focus on detecting hyperbole, its cognate effects, and the soundness of metonyms. They are based on the artificial ad hoc selection of properties and constrained description of the base. Two tell-tale signs of fetishes are their too-close relation to our interests and desires and their overtly dramatic nature. Sexual fetishes are a good example. Kinky games are pure, staged drama that outsiders may not want to witness. Hagiographies dramatize a person in simplified terms. An Orthodox icon gathers around it a fervently excited audience whose members participate in a ritualized play they hope will serve their vital de se interests. We may warn our audience of the consequences while admitting that some fetishes are charming fun.

3. Conclusions and Beyond

I have presented an account and theory of fetishes, fetishism, and fetishization using rhetorical terms and certain linguistic tropes. I have taken various examples from religion, the Bible, social criticism, modern art, and philosophy. The notion of fetishism is not limited to ‘primitive’ religions, where it may have started a long time ago. Its modern uses are critical but no longer derogatory—they are critical in the same sense as irony (Garmendia 2010; Airaksinen 2020); therefore, we may encounter resistance and hostility when identifying and introducing new fetishes. An atheist shamelessly argues Jesus in Christianity and the Divine Law in Islam are both fetishes (Dickinson 2020). Such claims may still endanger one’s reputation, freedom, and even life. Think of Jesus, one of the children of Josef and Maria, a young carpenter’s apprentice who started a career as a wandering preacher. His radical message proved popular, and the local conservative Pharisees realized he would soon be a dangerous foe to them. The Roman rulers of the country executed Jesus in the most shameful way they knew, but he rose from death and became Christ and a part of the godhead Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ, from an atheist point of view, is now a fetish. After his transformation, he satisfies believers’ crucial needs and desires and serves as the identity marker for all Christians. No good Christians may accept this narrative, which makes the context essentially contested. The atheists accuse the believers of supporting an atavistic ideological platform; the believers accuse them of misunderstanding and blasphemy.

The idea of fetishism is controversial, and certainly, we must not overuse it. Perhaps my multifaced conceptual net captures too many things. Perhaps my description of a fetish is conceptually too weak and needs strengthening. How to do that is hard to specify. I said above that A transforms into B, but then B satisfies human needs and desires. Those mythical Indians performed, in their culturally conditioned imagination, a conceptual transformation of alcohol into something different, namely, an enhancer of a religious ritual that they must and want to perform: they aimed at the unity of gods and humans—let us assume so. This imaginary transformation is easy to ironize because cheap whiskey has become a holy substance. We have found a fetish. The question is, is such an idea too permissive? Perhaps we are discussing irony here and nothing else?

A substantial condition that may restrict the range of modern fetishization is its relation to social identities. A crucifix is an identity marker, unlike the Indian’s whiskey, which is a mere magic means. Julia Lee (2023, p. 200) offers a perfect example of fetishized suffering as an identity marker (see the discussion above). Sometimes, people are what they are because they lean on their fetishes. Sexual fetishists are labeled after their sources of arousal. Duchamp is the kind of artist he is because of his ready-mades. Fetishes must have social significance. However, think of my second-hand laptop, which I glorify as the savior of my writing career. This junk machine looks to me like a gift from heaven. Is it my fetish? The transformation from junk to savior is easy to ironize, and the laptop satisfies my desires, but it is no identity marker. Accordingly, we may distinguish between fetishes and their images. A crucifix is a full-fledged fetish, unlike my laptop, which is a mere transient image of a fetish. This way, we can control the proliferation problem, but I am unsure if it is enough. More research is needed.

Perhaps we need not worry about the proliferation problem. Think of Richard Rorty’s “we, the ironists”. He writes:

Ironists inclined to philosophize see the choice between vocabularies as made neither within a neutral and universal metavocabulary nor by an attempt to fight one’s way past appearances to the real, but simply by playing the new off against the old. I call people of this sort ‘ironists’ because their realization that anything can be made to look good or bad by being redescribed and their renunciation of the attempt to formulate criteria of choice between final vocabularies, puts them in the position which Sartre called ‘meta-stable’: never quite able to take themselves seriously.

(Rorty 1989, p. 73)

Would this apply to fetishization, too? The connection between irony and fetishism is close, anyway. Everything can be ironized, says Rorty—but he exaggerates (Airaksinen 2021). Unlike literary critics, he says metaphysicians do not want to play with ironies. Could we say that fetishes, as symbolic constructions, are freely available for anyone who dares to look that way? These people would be ironists who take an extra step to identify fetishes and celebrate universal fetishization. This is another exciting possibility that invites further studies.