Neo-Fetishism: Toward an Epistemological Hybrid at the Crossroads between Psychoanalysis and the Social Sciences1

In this article, the author discusses the evolution of the concept of fetishism and calls attention to its epistemological lineage, where group and individual phenomena combine, and to its heuristic and methodological vocation. After this historical overview, he emphasizes Bernard Chervet’s observation that Freudian psychoanalysis has focused too much on the antitraumatic function and the erogenous function of the fetish object, and points to the cessation of metapsychological research on this theme. He explores the political stakes of the disappearance of fetishism from the clinical field under the cover of the “full elucidation” that Freud claimed to have reached. He presents the concept of “neo-fetishism” developed by the anthropologist Philippe Rigaut, the result of field work at the epicenter of new erotic cultures, which goes against the vanishing of fetishism in psychoanalysis. The author notes the importance of this putting the concept of fetishism back into play of and how it fits in to contemporary life, at the same time defining the limits of the social approach. He suggests that researchers take part in a transdisciplinary dialogue about fetishism and that psychoanalysts confront their dogmatic representations with live observation anchored in the actuality of current sexual practices.