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| | ELECTRONIC ANTIQUITY V4N2 |
 | | Fetishism arises when a substitute object takes the place of the 'missing' female phallus, serving to reassure the child and later adult that women are not really that different from men and can be safely approached. |
 | | When the fetish is a separate object, like a shoe or a type of material like fur or leather (the feel of which may recall infantile closeness and intimacy with the mother), it appears to deliver control of the problematic missing phallus and assuage the anxiety that surrounds it. |
 | | Fetishism can be approached from a number of angles: the psychoanalytic (Freud being the most influential, but not first, theorist), the anthropological (the study of objects particularly meaningful to a society, including its religious and ritual icons and objects of adoration), and the economic (the commodity and consumerist fetishism explicated by, amongst others, Marx). |
| scholar.lib.vt.edu /ejournals/ElAnt/V4N2/newbold.html (5912 words) |
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