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“This is what the bourgeois political economists have done: they have treated value as a fact of nature, not a social construction arising out of a particular mode of production. What Marx is interested in is a revolutionary transformation of society, and that means an overthrow of the capitalist value-form, the construction of an alternative value-structure, an alternative value-system that does not have the specific character of that achieved under capitalism. I cannot overemphasize this point, because the value theory in Marx is frequently interpreted as a universal norm with which we should comply. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard people complain that the problem with Marx is that he believes the only valid notion of value derives from labor inputs. It is not that at all; it is a historical social product. The problem, therefore, for socialist, communist, revolutionary, anarchist or whatever, is to find an alternative value-form that will work in terms of the social reproduction of society in a different image. By introducing the concept of fetishism, Marx shows how the naturalized value of classical political economy dictates a norm; we foreclose on revolutionary possibilities if we blindly follow that norm and replicate commodity fetishism. Our task is to question it.”
― David Harvey, A Companion to Marx's Capital, Volume 1

“Within neo-colonial white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the black male body continues to be perceived as an embodiment of bestial, violent, penis-as-weapon hypermasculine assertion. Psychohistories of white racism have always called attention to the tension between the construction of black male body as danger and the underlying eroticization that always then imagines that body as a location for transgressive pleasure. It has taken contemporary commodification of blackness to teach the world that this perceived threat, whether real or symbolic, can be diffused by a process of fetishization that renders the black masculine ‘menace�� feminine through a process of patriarchal objectification.”
― bell hooks, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity

“You know, those unboxing videos you see everywhere on YouTube. They are the epitome of consumerist fetishism.”
― David Cronenberg, Consumed

“��"...θα πρέπει να αντιληφθείς, αγαπητή Τερέζα, ότι τα αντικείμενα δεν έχουν, κατά την άποψη μας, άλλη αξία από εκείνη που τους δίνει η φαντασία μας”
― Marques de Sade, Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue

“However, in fetishism the desired object is displaced; and in this context (“The Apparition�� by Guy De Maupassant) it is the desiring object, so to speak. In other words, have we ever seen a boot in love with a fetishist?”
― Philippe Lejeune

“There is no more unfortunate creature under the sun than a fetishist who yearns for a woman's shoe and has to settle for the whole woman.”
― Karl Kraus

“Telling a woman that you will be unable to climax unless you are looking at her in a mirror is, in my experience, an excellent way to ensure the only place you will ever see her again is in depressing memories.”
― Stephen Moles

“And it is, indeed, to the more general problem of fetishism that this new twist brings us: after the becoming-sign of the object, the becoming-object of the sign.
In the sexual register, the fetish is no longer a sign but a pure object, meaningless in itself - a banal accessory, but one of absolute value, for which there can be no possible exchange. It is that object and no other.
But this banal singularity means that any object whatever can become a fetish. Its potentiality is total, precisely because it lies beyond any sexual reference or metaphor. It is the perfect object of sex, its perfect realization, insofar as it substitutes for any real sex - just as Virtual Reality substitutes itself for the real world and in that way becomes the universal form of our modern fetishism.
Modern man's immense panoply of information technology has become his true object of (perverse?) desire.
Fetishism being, as the name indicates (Feiticho), linked to abstraction and artifice, it is all the more radical for the abstraction being total.
If it was possible, in the past, to speak of the fetishism of the commodity, of money, of the simulacrum and the spectacle, that was still a limited fetishism (related to sign-value).
There stretches beyond this for us today the world of radical fetishism, linked to the de-signification and limitless operation of the real - to the sign's becoming pure object once again, before or beyond any metaphor.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact

“The blonde was staring at herself in the mirror, taking on a thoughtful, reflective tone. “Well, it isn’t easy. And his mood changes in an instant. But he collects different girls for different flavors �� so one girl doesn’t have to be everybody and everything.��
“Oh.�� I splashed water on my face and stared for a moment at the mask in the mirror.
“You’re just his type, totally. With all the tattoos, you are utterly monstrous, if you don’t mind my saying so. Punk-Goth gone mad.�� She swung around to take a close, direct look. “I never saw the point of tattoos, mind you, just fad and fashion. But,�� she focused on me, stared, grinned, and rolled her eyes. “My God, darling, you really are perfect! How could you do that to yourself?�� She licked her lips. “I think you will be a success. As I said, Sergei loves tattoos. He’s totally into the weird and the monstrous. He adores freaks �� and kid, you are about as freakish as they come.��
“You think so.�� I turned my mask towards her and gave her an extra big smile �� I was even more grotesque, Martine told me, when I smiled. “Oh, Gwen, how totally utterly horrible!�� she declared and then kissed me to console me for having become a monster. As I grinned at Sergei’s girl, the metal rings in my ears clanked against each other. I could feel the large ring nose, warm, smooth steel, against my curled upper lip.
“Yes, you look like a masterpiece of self-loathing.��
“It’s called body art,�� I said, “It’s a statement.��
“A statement?��
“Absolutely,�� I hiccupped. Everything was fuzzy; I forced myself to focus.
“Whatever it is, you’ll be a big success. Sergei collects waifs who suffer from extreme self-hatred. Self-destructive and self-hating girls are one of his hobbies. You can do so much with them.”
― Gwendoline Clermont, Gwendoline Goes Underground

“For some reason, I found the fact that our two men were naked, while Jester and I were, in a way, clothed, particularly exciting. Jester was adorned in paint, and I had my feathered pinioned wings and my owl mask. I was a totem, my man was transparent and naked; he was my servant and my slave, and he was that pure thing �� a naked male animal, and, tonight, he was mine.
“To-wit, to-whoo,�� I invited my servant with my owl call.
He kissed me; the kiss was fierce and unending, or so it seemed, an eternal kiss, a kiss that would carry us into infinity, his arms around me, grasping me, clasping me under my pinioned arms; his lips explored mine; our lips merged in one; my eyes were closed; it was pure sensation: the pouring rain, my dripping feathers, my pinioned arms pressed together, my shoulders pulled back tight, my breasts tensed and straining forward; his chest, hard and smooth and muscular against my breasts; his hands on me; his lips meeting my lips; his tongue mingling with my tongue. I breathed him in. Inwardly, I sighed, “Oh, Master!�� But it came out as a quizzical “To-wit, to-whoo?�� He whispered, “Oh, Goddess, oh, beautiful Owl.�� He held me so tight it was as if he wanted to consume me, merge my body in his, to absorb me totally.
Finally, he stepped back, unhooked the owl mask-and-hood from the collar, and lifted it off, and placed it carefully on an iron bench, which was the only furniture in the gazebo. My face, now, was naked.
And then, standing in the rain, we made love, me with my arms still pinioned behind me, totally at his mercy, thrilling at my helplessness, and entrusting myself totally to his love ...”
― Gwendoline Clermont, Gwendoline Goes To School

“Well, Misty Hoyt,�� Sergei grinned. “Why don’t you go up there on the stage and strut your stuff? I’d like to see you pole dance.��
“W�󲹳�?��
“Pole dance.��
“Oh, pole dance,�� I mumbled, slurping back saliva. I figured I would hardly be able to stand up, let alone pole dance. I had never pole danced in my whole life though Misty Hoyt had pole danced and had admitted as much at the bar to Andrei, but I hadn’t had time to catch up with all of Misty’s skills. This was definitely a hole in the planning of my backstory �� giving me experience, as a pole dancer, I would not be able to fake. I would look utterly grotesque too, tattooed as I was; the vanity of self-consciousness never dies �� I shuddered at the thought of me tattooed and pierced among those buff, golden, perfectly beautiful girls.
Whatever! I had to do it.
“Okay,�� I said, “You are the boss, Mister Sergei.�� I managed somehow to stand up, wobble, and then make my way, through tables and guests, and get over to the runway, and climb up onto it. It seemed very high. I weaved, tottered this way and that, and then somehow, I pulled myself together.
I pole danced with one of the pole dancers �� me weaving around one pole, and she around the other. She was the petite, fine-featured golden Vietnamese girl I had noticed before. I’d seen movies of pole dancing, so I managed to fake it; and then I was the tattooed pierced clown, a freakish waif, I didn’t really have to be very good.
Then �� I’m foggy about actually when �� the golden Vietnamese girl and I were ordered to make love on the runway in the bright lights. The strobe lights had stopped. The other pole dancers had disappeared into the crowd. And now, except for the spotlights on the two of us, the whole place was subdued in dull amber light, a sort of nightclub twilight. The music went down, and it was quiet. I thought maybe I was hallucinating the silence. But no, it was real.”
― Gwendoline Clermont, Gwendoline Goes Underground

“Fetishism, then, is a nondeclarative narrative �� a means of sharing pain, of being heard.”
― Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Apple: Sex, Drugs, Motherhood and the Recovery of the Feminine