Feminizing the Fetish : Psychoanalysis and Narrative Obsession in Turn-of-the Century France / / Emily Apter.

• Author: Apter, Emily S.
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca : : Cornell University Press,, 1991.; ©1991.
• Year of Publication: 2018; 1991
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (273 pages)

Shoes, gloves, umbrellas, cigars that are not just objects-the topic of fetishism seems both bizarre and inevitable. In this venturesome and provocative book, Emily Apter offers a fresh account of the complex relationship between representation and sexual obsession in turn-of-the-century French culture. Analyzing works by authors in the naturalist and realist traditions as well as making use of documents from a contemporary medical archive, she considers fetishism as a cultural artifact and as a subgenre of realist fiction. Apter traces the web of connections among fin-de-siècle representations of perversion, the fiction of pathology, and the literary case history. She explores in particular the theme of "female fetishism" in the context of the feminine culture of mourning, collecting, and dressing.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- CHAPTER 1. Fetishism in Theory: Marx, Freud, Baudrillard -- CHAPTER 2. The Epistemology of Perversion: From Pathology to Pathography -- CHAPTER 3. Cabinet Secrets : Peep Shows, Prostitution, and Bric-a-bracomania in the Fin-de-siecle Interior -- CHAPTER 4. Unmasking the Masquerade: Fetishism and Femininity from the Goncourt Brothers to Joan Riviere -- CHAPTER 5. Splitting Hairs: Female Fetishism and Postpartum Sentimentality in Maupassant's Fiction -- CHAPTER 6. Mystical Pathography: A Case of Maso-fetishism in the Goncourts' Madame Gervaisais -- CHAPTER 7. Hysterical Vision: The Scopophilic Garden from Monet to Mirbeau -- CHAPTER 8. Master Narratives/Servant Texts: Representing the Maid from Flaubert to Freud -- CHAPTER 9. Stigma Indelebile: Zola, Gide, and the Deviant Detail -- Conclusion -- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY -- Index