2014 | Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4 (3): 185–213 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Sasha Newell.

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: fetish; spirit; possession; materiality; semiosis; agency; Newell; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.675.5825; http://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/download/hau4.3.013/1629/

The matter of the unfetish Hoarding and the spirit of possessions Sasha Newell, North Carolina State University In this article, I employ West African ideas of spirited materiality to rethink the semiosis of possession in North Atlantic societies. I investigate this ethnographically through the lens of storage—those things kept out of sight and unused in US attics, basements, closets, and storage units. Things contained in storage form a residual category of animated detritus that US society often pathologizes as “hoarding ” when it makes public appearances in the visible space of the home or the television set. Arguing that the concept of fetishism is hopelessly tied to the “naturalist ” divide of Western rationality and the dichotomy between persons and things, I argue that objects typically labeled as fetishes are not fetishized but rather reflect a cosmology of material entities as containers for spirit. By constructing an ethnographic model of the unfetish in West Africa, I explore the sociality of possessions as belongings that truly belong.