Role of the Fetish in Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjuring Stories. Janelle Askew College

A fetish object assumes distinct, almost superstitious power and is often associated with sexual gratification, desire, and worship. As explained in “Sexualization in the Media," “Fetishization marks a cultural, psychological, and social technique of fetishizing things by making them appear larger than life, animate, or sexually desirable”. It is argued that this process has profoundly influenced contemporary consumer culture. Pietz asserts that the problem-idea of the fetish “arose within and remains specific to a particular type of cross-cultural experience first engaging European consciousness in ongoing situations on the West African coast after the fifteenth century.” With this in mind, fetishization within popular communication draws upon these cultural associations to create associative connections for products, brands, and organizations. Fetishization, as used in Charles Chestutt’s The Conjuring Stories, encompasses these concepts, but also refers to a broader cultural process of fetishizing objects via communicative technologies; especially in the short story Sis Becky Pickaninny, Chesnutt demonstrates the stages essential to fetishizing and the effect that it has on a person.

To paraphrase Jane Bennett, it is assumed...