Fetishism (n.) is belief which is practiced not directly, but only through another. The leftist academic pursues his well-paid carrier while using an idealized other (like cuba, nicaragua, tito's yugoslavia) as the stuff of their ideological fantasy.
Fetishism (n.) is not a subjective illusion but is embodied in material practices. It is not a matter of us directly believing in the magical properties of something like money, but rather of us behaving in our social interactions as though we do.
Fetishism (n.) is the idea that there are relations between people behind relations between things.
Fetishism (n.) as anthropology coined it unites a critique of ideology with ideology itself: mocking the primitive's false idols, the observer asserts his own superiority.
A Fetishism (n.) beneath the apparent disavowal of castration is desperately trying to stage it, so as to separate from the mother and get room to breathe.
Fetishism (n.) never disappears, it moves: capitalism freed relations between men of their mystical aura and paid for it with the fetishism of things.
A Fetishism (n.) in capitalism is a fetishist in practice, not in theory: everyone knows money is just a sign of social relations, yet everyone acts as if it were wealth itself.
Fetishism (n.) lies not in how we think but in what we do: they do not know it, but they are doing it.