Beyond Fetishism and Other Excursions in Psychopragmatics

by Moorjani, Angela

• ISBN13: 9780312226251
• ISBN10: 031222625X
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2000-02-05
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Do the meanings of the innumerable fetish-signs appearing in recent artworks depend on the senders' intentions? Is the meaning of postfeminist glamour the celebration of femininity that its practitioners tout to counter ersatz macho posturing? To fully examine and clarify these and other issues involving gender, postcolonial, and artistic otherness, this book argues for a more adequate view of performativity than presently available from speech-act theory and certain strains of linguistic pragmatics. In drawing simultaneously on Charles Sander Peirce's pragmatic analysis of signs, Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalytic inquiry, and radical feminist thought, the concern of Beyond Fetishism is with the ethical and aesthetic import of the psychopragmatics resulting from this intermingling.

Author Biography

Angela Moorjani is Professor of French at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	viii
Preface	ix
Introduction	xiii
Part I Toward a Psychopragmatic Notion of the Cultural Unconscious
Psychopragmatics and Performativity	3	(16)
The Postcolonial Unconscious	19	(10)
Aesthetic Paradoxes and Perplexities	29	(16)
Part II Interpreting the Femininity Fetish
Introduction to Part II	41	(4)
The Phallic Woman and the Pregnant Man	45	(28)
Gynesis, Feminine Writing, and Masquerade	73	(20)
Skin Fetishism	93	(34)
Epilogue: Is There a ``Beyond Fetishism''?	127	(6)
Appendix: List of Artists	133	(4)
Notes	137	(20)
Works Cited	157	(15)
Index	172