The Fetish in the Lusophone Atlantic

Bibliographic Data

ID20060646
AuthorsR Sansi (0000-0001-7084-9243, King's College London, corresponding author), Roger Sansi-Roca
Year2007
Pages19-39
Publication date2007-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueCultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan US (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/9780230606982_2
OpenAlexW2496687740
ISBN9780230606982
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited13

The term "fetish" has a long and complex story bound to the history of the Atlantic. It originates from the Portuguese term feitiço, magic charm, and feitiçaria (sorcery). The Portuguese recogniz ed many of the ritual practices they encountered in Africa as forms of sorcery. References to the fetish date from the seventeenth century, in Dutch and English travel accounts of the West Coast of Africa. Travelers often misrecognized the Portuguese origin of the term, and defined the fetish as a specifically African religion. For these Protestant travelers, this African religion was particularly deviant: it seemed to be based on self-interest, chance, and the worship of material things. From the eighteenth century on, theories of "fetishism" became central to Western discourses on Africa. For enlightened philosophers, African fetishists would be unable to distinguish objects from subjects, religion from economy, and good from evil. Fetishism sent Africans far back in history to the dark origins of humanity at an impossible distance from enlightened Europe

Geography · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History