MARX, FREUD AND THE GODS BLACK PEOPLE MAKE: EUROPEAN SOCIAL THEORY AND THE REAL LIFE FETISH

Since the early-modern encounter between African and European merchants on the Guinea Coast, the term “fetish” has analogized alleged disorders in European thought to African gods. Yet African gods have a logic of their own that is no less reasonable, given the position of their worshipers in the Atlantic economy, than are the different but equally socially positioned theories of Marx and Freud. This lecture offers a novel perspective on the social roots of these tandem African and European understandings of collective action, illuminating the relationship of European social theory to the racism suffered by Africans and assimilated Jews alike.