[NON BLOG] More on fetishes
Sep. 9th, 2005 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI noticed, after I blogged about my visit to the Church Street Fetish Fair, at least two people on my friends list complain that it wasn't a serious event, that it was aimed at tourists interested in a mild charge and ignorant of its deeper meanings. This is a pity, since, as a commenter noted, fetishes are serious things indeed, motivated by a desire to fulfill a need for something once lacking but always desired.
It's interesting that Freud chose to describe this sort of thing the word "fetish," a word belonging to an evolutionary theory that denigrated this sort of specialized interest. Everyone's doing this sort of thing these days, or at least everyone seems to be, to some degree or another. Non-heterosexual cultures seem as a rule to be innovative, perhaps out of a need to construct a viable sexual and romantic culture from apparently solid first principles. The 21st century is going to be very interesting, I think.
And me? This isn't that sort of a blog, or, at least, it won't be until I get more $C10 monthly subscription fees in. (That'll also be the point when I'll switch from text as my main medium to streaming video.) I do freely admit to my fetishization of fetishize modernity, and I still love the rush that I get from fast-approaching subway stations seen through the windows of subway cars, or skyscrapers turned partly transparent at night by their office lights, or from the CN Tower's glass floor when I walk on it and look down. All these are rushes; I get rushes.
It's just that I wish these experiences were transportable in phrases and sentiments more compact than analogies, that something more precise and transportable--tricks of language, genius technologies--could work. It's part of my clinging love for debased Cartesianism, the desire for a system of universal and universally understood coordinates working on the human mind. Alas, Descartes never seems to work well enough for visceral sentiments.
[T]o continue with the point that the fetish is the substitute for a lost object, the gay male interest in leather, theoretically, stem from an early psychological insight that he, as a queer child, lacks in his masculinity in comparison to his father or other male figures in his life. This lack is sutured by a powerful interest in masculine clothing, such as leather jackets, fetish gear from iconic figures like cops or prison guards, and so on. Once in the hands of the gay fetishist, such gear becomes sexy, playful, and performative, sending up the values that such gear traditionally holds.
It's interesting that Freud chose to describe this sort of thing the word "fetish," a word belonging to an evolutionary theory that denigrated this sort of specialized interest. Everyone's doing this sort of thing these days, or at least everyone seems to be, to some degree or another. Non-heterosexual cultures seem as a rule to be innovative, perhaps out of a need to construct a viable sexual and romantic culture from apparently solid first principles. The 21st century is going to be very interesting, I think.
And me? This isn't that sort of a blog, or, at least, it won't be until I get more $C10 monthly subscription fees in. (That'll also be the point when I'll switch from text as my main medium to streaming video.) I do freely admit to my fetishization of fetishize modernity, and I still love the rush that I get from fast-approaching subway stations seen through the windows of subway cars, or skyscrapers turned partly transparent at night by their office lights, or from the CN Tower's glass floor when I walk on it and look down. All these are rushes; I get rushes.
It's just that I wish these experiences were transportable in phrases and sentiments more compact than analogies, that something more precise and transportable--tricks of language, genius technologies--could work. It's part of my clinging love for debased Cartesianism, the desire for a system of universal and universally understood coordinates working on the human mind. Alas, Descartes never seems to work well enough for visceral sentiments.
