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This paper seeks to shed light on the relationship between online and offline worlds through a theoretical articulation based on the concept of fetishism. First, it examines the concept of fetishism in anthropology, Marxism, and particularly psychoanalysis. It then shows that there is an increasing fetishization of the virtual in everyday life, while conversely the material world is fetishized in cyberspace. This bidirectional movement is associated with the increasing hybridization between online and offline worlds. Finally, a parallel is drawn between symmetrical or dual fetishism and the logic of the discourse of capitalism defined by Jacques Lacan.
The Latin adjective “facticius” or “factitius,” derived from the verb “facere” (“to make”), indicates something manufactured by humans and it eventually acquires the connotation of something artificial and misleading. St. Augustine, for example, in a scholium to the biblical commandment “You shall make for yourself no molten gods,” mentions “facticiorum deorum” (1991, p. 84), which means manufactured gods. From the Latin matrix comes the word “feitiço,” used in the beginning of modernity by Portuguese merchants to indicate African customs, and hence the French variation “fétiche,” which propagates to other languages. The pioneer in the use of the word “fetishism” was Charles de Brosses (1988), whose work Du culte des dieux fétiches,