Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 

Saved Queries

Sign in to use this feature.

Search Filter Reset All

Years

Between: -

Subjects

remove_circle_outline
Add Subjects Reset
Select Subjects

Journals

remove_circle_outline
Add Journals Reset
Select Journals

Article Types

remove_circle_outline
Add Article Types Reset
Select Article Types

Countries / Regions

remove_circle_outline
remove_circle_outline
Add Countries / Regions Reset
Select Countries / Regions
Update Search
share announcement

Search Results (2)

Search Parameters:
Keywords = religious fetishes

Order results
Result details
Results per page
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
14 pages, 211 KiB  
Article
Fetishism for Our Times: A Rhetorical and Philosophical Exploration
by Timo Airaksinen
Religions 2024, 15(10), 1192; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15101192 - 30 Sep 2024
Viewed by 1780
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 [...] Read more.
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. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Religions and Humanities/Philosophies)
8 pages, 190 KiB  
Article
The West Nickel Mines Amish School Murders and the Cultural Fetishization of “Amish Forgiveness”
by Darcy Metcalfe
Religions 2019, 10(9), 524; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10090524 - 11 Sep 2019
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3910
Abstract
In the days and weeks following the West Nickel Mines Amish school murders, hegemonic U.S. cultural discourse largely fetishized the Amish response of forgiveness in revealing ways. Within this discourse, the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 were referenced in articles and commentaries [...] Read more.
In the days and weeks following the West Nickel Mines Amish school murders, hegemonic U.S. cultural discourse largely fetishized the Amish response of forgiveness in revealing ways. Within this discourse, the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 were referenced in articles and commentaries which sought to weigh the moral value of forgiveness in response to extreme violence. In this way, understandings of Amish forgiveness were largely “strip-mined” from the Nickel Mines community and “transported wholesale” to other counter-cultural settings. In dominant U.S. capitalistic and consumeristic culture, Amish forgiveness quickly became a fluctuating material commodity that was fetishized in ways which revealed the destabilized moral consciousness of a nation. Dominant cultural discourse exposed this destabilization while it also worked to interrogate it. I conclude that the fetishization of forgiveness following the Amish school murders reflected collective concerns that reached far beyond the immediate context of the Nickel Mines Amish community. The U.S. cultural fetishization of forgiveness revealed, instead, a cultural consciousness that desperately sought relief from the chaos and confusion of what it means to be a citizen of nation that exists in and by the normativity of extreme violence. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Beliefs and the Morality of Payback)
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying article 1-50 on page 1 of 1.
Back to TopTop