Fetish and the Native Subject Author(s): Henry Krips Source: boundary 2, Vol. 24, No.

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Fetish and the Native Subject

Henry Krips
Extensions of the Freudianconcept of fetishism to premodern, nonWestern situations are commonplace in postcolonial literature.On close inspection, it emerges that the applicationof such concepts is often grounded in overgeneralized structuralhomologies rather than criteria properly derivedfrom Freudiantheory. Homi Bhabha, for instance, leaps withoutargument fromthe existence of contradictorybeliefs concerning lack and wholeness to fetishistic disavowal in the technical Freudiansense, which focuses on the mother's lack of a penis: For fetishism is always a "play"or vacillation between the archaic affirmationof wholeness/similarity-in Freud'sterms: "Allmen have penises"; in ours "Allmen have the same skin/race/culture"-and the anxiety associated with lack and difference--again, for Freud "Some do not have penises"; for us "Some do not have the same skin/race/culture."1 Such inferentialleaps are doubtless facilitatedby a certain looseness in the Freudianarchitectonic, in particularby Freud'sfailureto clarifycon1. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 74. boundary2 24:1, 1997. Copyright 1997 by Duke UniversityPress. ?

114 boundary / Spring 2 1997 nections between various more or less well-definedphenomena associated with fetishism, including disavowal, the fading of desire, the breaching of repression, sighting the mother'slack of a penis, contradictorybeliefs of the
form "Iknow that ... but even so ... ,"and so on.2 However, Freud is careful

not to trivializethe notion of fetishism by moving too readilybetween these various phenomena. I do the same here by developing a more systematic concept of fetishism in the context of a Lacanian reading of Freud. I illustrate this concept in three cases: Oscar Mannoni'sdiscussion of Taleyseva's autobiographicalaccount of Hopi initiation,Claude Levi-Strauss's discussion of totemism among the Ojibwa and Algonquin, and Levi-Strauss's analysis of the Oedipus myth in a classical Greek context.3

The HopiSun
In Soleil Hopi (Hopi Sun), Taleyseva, a chief of the North American Hopi Indians, narrates his childhood. Hopi rituals,we are told, included a ceremony during which certain masks, called Katcina, were worn by the dancers. The Hopi encouraged a belief among their offspring that the masked dancers were Gods (also called Katcina). Young children were frightened into behaving themselves by being told that if they did not eat their porridge, go to sleep, stop crying, and so on, then the Katcina would come and eat them. However, at initiation,apparently to the great consternation of the young initiates, fathers and uncles of the clan revealed themselves as wearers of the masks, a revelationthat threatened to destroy not only a whole cosmology but also the rationalefor much of the children's early learned behavior. As Taleyseva retrospectively tells the story of his
own initiation: "I was greatly shocked: these weren't spirits .
.

. I felt un-

happy because all my life I had been told that the Katcinawere Gods. I was above all shocked and furious to see my clan uncles and fathers dancing as Katcina. But it was even worse to see my own father."4
views on fetishism,in J. Ladiscussion of developmentsin Freud's 2. See the interesting and J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis,trans. David Nicholsonplanche Smith(NewYork: Norton,1973), 118-20, 309, 428-30. 3. Because Mannoniis committedto a Freudianapproach,drawingon his workin the Even if we concede this present context may seem to beg the question of its validity. heuristicroleas an illustration analysis takes on an important point,however,Mannoni's materials. framework of how a Freudian existinganthropological may be used to rework eu un grandchoc: ce n'etaiaentpas des esprits ... je me sentais bien mal4.... j'ai des dieux. J'6tais heureuxpuisque toute ma vie on m'avaitdit que les Katcina etaient surtoutchoque et furieuxde voirtous mes peres at oncles de clan danser en Katcina. "Je Maisc'etaitencore pirede voirmon proprepere. See Oscar Mannoni, sais bien ...

Krips/ Fetishand the NativeSubject 115 As they were exposed to the apparentlydevastating revelation, initiates were offered additional knowledge in mythologicalform:a recounting of un autrefois, a golden age, when the Gods had danced openly among the people. The mythwent on to claim that, "ina mysterious way," Gods the were still present on dance days: "Youknow that the real Katcina don't come to dance in the pueblos as they did in other times. They come only in an invisible fashion, and inhabitthe masks during the dance days in a mysterious way."5 The myth thus became a site at which contradictiontook shape: "I knowthat the dancers are my uncles and fathers, not spirits, but even so the Katcinaare present when my uncles and fathers dance in the masks."6This
mais quand m~me,"Les TempsModernes212 (1964):16. Alltranslations fromthis work are my own. 5. Maintenant, dit-onaux enfants, [the initiates]... vous savez que les vrais Katcinane viennent pas comme autrefoisdans les pueblos. Ils ne viennentplus que de fagon inles visible,et ils habitent masques les joursde danse de fagon mystique" (Mannoni, "Je sais bien," 16). on Mannoni observes: "Onvoit lI . . . le moCommenting this momentof revelation, ment ou la croyance,abandonnant formeimaginaire, symboliseassez pourouvrir sa se sur la foi, c'est a diresur un engagement"[One sees there ... the momentwhen belief, to form,enters the symbolic mode sufficiently open out into abandoningits imaginary faith,that is to say, onto commitment] sais bien," (religious) ("Je 16-17). should be understoodhere as a referenceto the signifierin its role as "Symbolic" Lacan discusses this notionof the signifierin his FourFunVorstellungsreprisentanz. damentalConcepts of Psychoanalysis,trans. Alan Sheridan(New York: Norton,1981), 56-60 and 216-21. Hereafter, workis cited parenthetically Concepts.The operathis as tion of such signifiersinvolvesa peculiarformof doubledeception. Forthe children,the masks functionas signs of the Gods' presence by concealingtheirabsence. Inthe context of the initiation, masqueradebecomes more complex, however.It is admitted the that the masks hide the absence of the Gods, but the admission is made only in order to advance a second deception:that the absence is only apparentsince the Gods are fashion(de fagoninvisible). present in an invisible Inthe same way,a symbolicpainting representssomethingby representing something the to different, artbeingto turnthis difference advantageby makingitthe site of an inference: fromwhat is overtlyrepresentedto that whichis not. Mannoni, see, associates we such symbolismwith religiousfaith.Religioussymbols signal the presence of the divine device of admitting theirown povertyas representations something of by the paradoxical that is present in an invisible fashion,or that exists only in a transcendentsense. 6. "Je sais bien que les Katcinane sont pas des esprits, ce sont mes peres et oncles, mais quand m~me les Katcinasont l&quand mes pares et oncles dansent masques" "Je (Mannoni, sais bien,"16). Note thatthe statementof perceptualevidence comes first in the formulaic utteranceand then is qualifiedby the disavowal"but even so."This parallels Freud'sfamous example:"Iknowmy motherhasn't got a penis, but even so ..." The fetish object, then, assumes the role of substitutefor the mother'smissing penis,

2 116 boundary / Spring1997 contradictiontakes the same semantic formas what Freudcalls "disavowal" (Verleugnung):"Iknow that ... but even so ... ,"which in turn raises the question of whether such semantic resemblance is sufficient to establish the contradictionin question as a disavowal in the full Freudiansense. Freud introduces the notion of disavowal in the context of a discussion of fetishism. Accordingto Freud: The two attitudes of the fetishist-their disavowal of the woman's lack of a penis and their recognitionof this absence and grasp of its consequences (anxiety)-"persist side by side throughouttheir lives without influencingeach other. Here is what may rightlybe called a splittingof the ego."7 Inshort, disavowals are defined as discursive sites where repressed knowledge, such as the Mother'slack of a penis or some other manifestation of the subject's primal lack, surfaces in more or less direct form. It coexists there with a reaction formation in terms of which such knowledge is repressed: for instance, by a belief that the mother never had a penis in the first place, and in that respect at least lacks nothing.8
linkedto or takes the formof an object metaphorically, metonymically, and thus typically of the mother'sgenitalia,an embodiment the last momentwhen the illusionof the phallic motheris preserved. 7. Laplancheand Pontalis,Languageof Psychoanalysis,119.The quotationis fromSigmundFreud,On Sexuality,trans.James Strachey(NewYork: Penguin,1984), 357. versions of the repressed conceive it as a sort of unnameableand unmen8. Hollywood tionablething,whichadultscannot bringreadilyto mindbecause of its associations with childhoodexperiences (sight of the mother'sgenitalia,the familyromance,and so on) that so horrifying they were wipedfrommemoryalmostas soon as they happened.Only in later,in adultlife,does the repressed return varioussinisterguises, able to be brought work. to fullconsciousness only by muchstressfuland difficult (analytic) Freud,turnsupsidedownthe traditional pic(ideological) Lacan,by contrast,following ture of repressionby allowingthat a subject may withoutmuch difficulty bringto mind repressed memories, and indeed does so withoutoccasioning himself much distress: for made it quite clear that, althoughit was difficult the subject to reproducein "Freud dream the memory of the heavy bombingraid,for example, from which his neurosis derives--it does not seem, when he is awake,to botherhimeitherway"(Concepts,51). fact The memory's"repressed" status, accordingto Lacan,resides not in the putative of its burialbeyond immediaterecallbut ratherin the phantasystructureof symptoms, whichpunctuatea subject'ssubsevariousand variedhiddenformsof return, including lifepractices.The subconsciousstatus of repressed memoriespertainsnotto their quent to content,whichmay be totallyopen to consciousness, butrather theirmoreor less hidden connections withcertainpractices (slips, symptoms,and so on). The phenomenon since it allows repressed knowledge of disavowalillustratespreciselysuch a possibility, to surface moreor less openly.

Krips/ Fetishandthe NativeSubject 117 Formally,then, the disavowal consists of two components: first, an
"avowal" expressed in the form "but even so ... ,"which more or less directly

asserts that which has been repressed, such as the fact of the mother's missing penis or some other metaphoric transcriptionof the mother's primal lack; second, the disavowal involves a "denial,"usually grounded in commonsense perception, which reinstates the repression by denying the mother had a penis in the firstplace. The second component is also (somewhat confusingly) called "the disavowal"and is written in the form "Iknow
that . .. is not the case."

It is tempting to interpretthe shocking revelation that the masked dancers were the novices' uncles as the liftingof repression, the repressed knowledge in question being the absence of the Gods inside the masks.9 But this interpretation gets things exactly wrong. Repressed knowledge, as we shall see, usually comes to the surface in metaphoricallytranscribed form as affirmingthe importance of a certain object, which in turn functions as a stand in, or metaphoric equivalent, for the subject's lack. In the case of the Hopi initiation, reasons I discuss below, this object turns out for to be the Katcina mask, which the relevant repressed knowledge presents as a vessel for the Gods. This means, of course, that the revelationof the uncles inside the masks counts not as a liftingof repression but ratheras its inaugurationor reinforcement,depending on whether or not the young novices had, at an earlier stage, seen through the deception that the dancers were Gods. In either case, however, belief in the Gods' presence inside the masks was recuperated after the revelation; specifically, it returned in mythologicalform as a denial of what the initiates plainlysaw: "buteven so the Katcina are present when my uncles and fathers dance in the masks."
9. Specifically, is temptingto understandthe revelation"Iknow that the dancers are it as confrontation the otherwiserepressed with my uncles and fathers,not spirits" a brutal or hiddenknowledgethat the Gods are not there at all, a confrontation deflected at the last minuteby the sophistic device of reconceivingthe Gods' presence as invisible,or perhaps symbolicin some way: "buteven so the Katcinaare present when my uncles and fathersdance in the masks."Such an understanding subsumes the revelation under the Freudian of category of an uncovering,or a "return" the repressed. The disavowal, the (mis)representation the Gods' apparentabsence as a sign of theirinvisiblepresof ence, emerges, then, as an attemptto reinstate repression in the wake of the return of what previouslyhad been hidden.Since, accordingto Freud,such returnsof the rehas pressed are always accompaniedby anxiety,such an understanding the virtueof the explaining,indeed predicting, "consternation" (reconstruedas anxiety)whichTaleyseva retrospectively associates withthe revelation.Such an explanationis based on a of notionof disavowal,however,as we shall see. misconception the Freudian

2 118 boundary / Spring1997 In terms of the analysis suggested here, such recuperation constituted a "returnof the repressed" at the level of consciousness, albeit in somewhat modified form. By surfacing more or less openly into consciousness, instead of reappearing merely as symptomatic slips, this returnof the repressed constituted an avowal in the full Freudiansense. And, a fortiori,the contradictionbetween the revelation that the masks were empty (the moment of denial) and the subsequent mythologicalrecuperationof the Gods' presence (the moment of avowal) emerges as a disavowal (Verleugnung). The exact moment of disavowal is not as easy to identifyas might appear from the argument so far. Taleyseva recounts another, even earlier childhood incident in which he surprised his mother, who was making the traditionalgifts given by the Katcinato Hopi children:
The mothers ... redeem their terrorized children [from the Katcina]

by givingthe Katcinameat; in exchange, the Katcinagive the children maize balls, piki, which on this occasion are exceptionally colored
red. .
.

. On one occasion, Taleyseva recounts that I surprised my

mother cooking the piki. When I saw that it was red, I was bowled over. That evening I couldn't eat, and when the Katcina distributed their gifts I didn'twant them.10 How can this story, which seemingly implies that Taleyseva knew the dancers were fakes long before his initiation,be reconciled with the apparently contradictory claim that the revelation of his uncles' role in the initiation ceremony came as "ungrand choc"? Freud argues that trauma attaches itself to an event retrospectively, not because it was horribleor shocking when it happened (even though it may have been) but rather because subsequent symptoms position that event at their fictionalorigin.Thus Taleyseva's traumaticmemory of his initiation, "J'aieu un grand choc," is significant not as a veridical historical record of his childhood experience. On the contrary, if the episode with the piki is to be credited, then his memory played him false in connection with the initiation.He already knew well before initiation,it seems, that the dancers were not Gods, and so the revelationcould not have come as the shock he remembered. Instead, we may conclude, it took on its traumatic quality retrospectively,at later moments in his life when he came to construct a narrative in which subsequent anxieties (we do not know which)
10. Mannoni,"Je sais bien,"14-15. As we shall see, the question of repressionmust be treated carefullyhere, since repressionstarts to break down in situationsof fetishism, such as Hopirelationsto the Katcinamasks.

Krips/ Fetishandthe NativeSubject 119 attached themselves to initiationas their cause. In other words, by a process of rememorization,the initiation came to take on the paradoxicalstatus of a memorialfor subsequent events. This means, of course, that the structureof disavowal was instituted retrospectively ratherthan arose at the moment of initiation.In short, initiation did not inaugurate the structure of disavowal; rather, it developed subsequently, as an aspect of initiates'integrationof their experiences into historical remembrances of their lives.

Objeta and Desire

Mannoni's analysis argues that Hopi initiation precipitated a structure of disavowal, a conclusion I have emended by emphasizing the retrospective nature of that process. A more fine-grained analysis is needed, however, in order to identify the fetish object implicated in this structure, as well as to justify equivalences, such as that between the Katcinamask and the mother's lack, on which the argument of the previous section depends. When he first introduces it in the context of his discussion of the Fort-Da game, Jacques Lacan presents the objet a as the cottonreel around which Freud'sgrandson organized distractionsfrom his primal state of lack, a lack that, Lacan asserts in agreement with Freud, will stay with him for the whole of his life. Such distractions work in virtue of the pleasure they produce or, as Lacan puts it, because they "go some way to satisfying the pleasure principle" (Concepts, 62). The cotton-reel was joined to Freud'sgrandson by a piece of string. However, the game drives a wedge between the child and his toy, thus consigning the latter to the position of missing part. In this way, the game creates a new lack, involvingwhat Lacan calls a process of "self-mutilation" (Concepts, 62). Because the game only goes "some way to satisfying the pleasure principle"(Concepts, 62), the child is subjected to a second lack, which is constituted by the gap between the satisfaction he gets from the game and the (purely imaginary)state of total satisfaction that is, and continues to be, his aim (Ziel). These two lacks are equivalent by virtue of their sharing the same position in the child's causal history: both emerge as aspects of his response to the problemof failureto get satisfaction." Because it emerges as a response or, as Lacan says, an "answer" to
11.The equivalencehere is a matterof a shared metonymic witha prior relation common cause. As Freudhas shown us, at the level of the psyche, equivalencesare groundedin such relations.

2 1997 120 boundary / Spring original lack, the double lack created by the Fort-Dagame is, so to speak, merely an exchange forthe original.And by virtueof the structuralhomology between motherand cotton-reel-specifically, the fact that each comes and goes in relationto the child-this equivalence is doubled at the level of the In child's perceptions.12 short: LACK= MISSINGOBJETA = CONTINUSUBJECT'S ORIGINAL ING LACK SATISFACTION OF This series of equivalences can be extended to include the mother. That is, the fact of the subject's lack implies that the mother is also a site of lack, since, insofar as she cannot give satisfaction, she, too, must be lacking. Thus: = LACK LACK SUBJECT'S ORIGINAL MOTHER'S Therefore, we arriveat the chain of identities: = = LACK CONTINUING LACK SUBJECT'SORIGINAL MOTHER'S = LACK SATISFACTION MISSINGOBJETA OF from which it follows that:
MOTHER'S LACK = OBJETA

thus justifyingone of the premises on which the argument of the previous section depends. A similarset of equivalences can be derived for all objets a subsequently introduced by Lacan (the breast, the turd, the gaze, the voice, and so on), since in all cases, the objet a provides a focus around which diversions from the subject's continuing lack are organized. Lacan also uses his account of the Fort-Dagame to show how desire gets into the picture in relationto the objet a. He claims that in the course will of the Fort-Dagame, the mother's "outline" be "made up of the brushstrokes and gouaches of desire" (Concepts, 63). In other words, desire emerges as an effect, an epiphenomenon, of the process of producingpleasure. In general terms, then, desire emerges as that relationto the mother (invoked here in her role as object of need) into which the child is precipitated by entering into the diversions of the Fort-Dagame. Thus, the objet a, as object around which the Fort-Da is organized, appears in its role as object-cause of desire.13 Indeed, the objet a takes on a paradoxical dual
that is, it is groundedin a structural 12. Inthis case, the equivalenceworksby metaphor; similarity. 13. The cotton-reelis not itself desired, however,since childrenknow where their real source of satisfactionlies, namelywiththe mother;and, as Lacanputs it, childrenknow

Krips/ Fetishand the NativeSubject 121 relation to desire, not only functioningas cause of desire but also, insofar as it distracts and thus delays subjects from getting what they want, taking on the dimensions of impedimentto desire. In this way, Lacan demystifies the ideological picture (taken up retrospectively by subjects) according to which, by pursuingtheir desire, they become the agent of their pleasure.14 Along with the entry to desire, subjects engage in the process of repression. That is, at the level of practice, subjects pursue desire as if it were the sole source of satisfaction, thus for all practical purposes erasing the fact that desire comes from the productionof pleasure ratherthan the other way around.15 According to Lacan, such erasure is a constitutive moment in the formation of the unconscious (and, a fortiori,of the subject). Thus, repression and the unconscious emerge together as functions of self-misrecognition (meconnaissance) at the level of the subjects' practices, a misrecognition that may or may not be repeated at the level of
consciousness.16

Freud proposes two mechanisms for producing pleasure. The first, cathexis, involves stabilizing a subject's libidinalenergies by anchoring, or them to a particularobject.7 For instance, childrenderive pleasure "fixing,"
well that "thereel is not the motherreducedto a littleballby some magicalgame worthy of the Jivaros" (Concepts,62). 14. "Ideological" is used in Althusser's here sense; indeed, it is a referenceto ideologyin to general,whichis the means by whichsubjects are introduced the categoryof agency: doingthingsof theirown free will,going forwhat they want,and so on. 15. Whichis not to say that pleasure nevercomes fromgettingwhat one wants. On the childrentake pleasurefromthe breast, whichthey get fromthe mother,whom contrary, they desire. Inthis case, pleasurecomes fromthe desired object, butonly because it is also an object of need. The question of producingpleasure willbe addressed in more detailbelow. 16. Such a conceptionrepudiates Hollywood the notionof the unconsciousas a reservoir of truths,hiddendeeply inside the psyche. Indeed, the Hollywood conceptionemerges as a reification concealingthe realoriginsof the unconscious.The interesting questionis whetherthis misconceptionis, to use Althusser'sterminology, aspect of "ideology an in that is, an aspect of a practical essential to the functionof general," self-misrecognition agency, or merelyan aspect of a historically contingentideologyin particular. 17. Thefixinghere is notso muchthe physicalact of suckingbutrather fixingof attention. a Thus,the fixingis mediatedby an idea of the objectfixed.See Languageof Psychoanalynotionof sis, 62-65, and 162-64, fora useful discussion of the vagaries of the Freudian to fixingand cathexis. According Lacan, "'Pleasure'obeys the law of homeostasis that Freudevokes in Beyondthe Pleasure Principle, whereby,throughdischarge,the psyche seeks the lowest possible level of tension"(Concepts,281).

122 boundary / Spring 2 1997 (or "satisfaction") fixingtheir libidinal by energies to an object of need, such as their mothers' breast. The drive is the second mechanism for producing pleasure.18Each drive is associated with an imbricated pair of needs: the scopic drive, for instance, is associated with the need to see (voyeurism) and be seen (exhibitionism).19 According to Lacan, the drive introduces an extra degree of stabilityinto the libidinalflux associated with such pairs of needs, by channeling it around an object that Lacan also designates "the objet a." This object is not itself an object of need; its function is solely to deflect the libidinalflux into a more stable circularconfiguration.20 Howdoes such a conception of the objet a as an object aroundwhich the drive circles connect with the notion adumbrated in Lacan's earlier discussion of Fort-Da, where it is the cotton-reel that takes on the role of objet a? In his discussion of the scopic drive, Lacan introduces a new sort the of object that he calls "thelure." function," lure is Operatingin its "natural exemplifiedby animals who, by throwingoff a piece of skin, create a double, a visual simulation, with which they deceive their enemies. Man, by contrast, deceives in a more complex way: "thehuman subject ... is not, unlike
the animal, entirely caught up in this imaginary capture .... Man, in effect, knows how to play with the mask" (Concepts, 107).21 Specifically, man de-

ceives by creating a deception that is meant to be exposed, thus covertly trappingthe viewer by enabling himto partake in the pleasures of exposing deception. That a viewer has been trapped by such a device is signaled by the deception's continuinggrip despite the viewer seeing through it. Lacan illustratesthese points by recounting Plato's classical tale of Zeuxis and Parrhasios: Zeuxis has the advantage of having made grapes that attracted the
birds [the lure in its natural function]. . . . Parrhasios triumphs over

him for having painted on the wall a veil, a veil so lifelikethat Zeuxis, turning towards him said, Well, and now show us what you have painted behind it. (Concepts, 103)
mistransfor term Trieb, 18. Lacan'stermforthe driveis pulsion,as a translation Freud's see On as lated in TheStandardEdition "Instinct." this pointof mistranslation, Language of Psychoanalysis,214-15. 19. Lacandiscusses the scopic driveand its connectionto such circularmovementsof seeing and being seen in Concepts, 181-84. See also Concepts, 165-68, for a general of discussion of the connectionbetween the driveand the production pleasure. 20. The objet a may be conceived here by analogy with a foreignbody that, on being into a turbulent introduced stream, smoothes out the flow by becomingthe center of a circular whirlpool. 21. See also Concepts,102,104, 111,and 186.

Krips/ Fetishandthe NativeSubject 123 the Parrhasios'striumphresides not in deceiving Zeuxis intothinking painted veil is real; on the contrary,by saying "show us what you have painted," Zeuxis clearly displays a recognition that the image of the veil is just a painting. Thus, he manages to see through a deception at precisely the level where, by mistaking a simulation for the real thing, the birds were fooled. Zeuxis is fooled nonetheless; that is, he is trapped by the image. He shows this by asking what is painted behind the painting of the veil, thus indicatinga mistaken belief that in the same way that veils conceal things behind them, so, too, something must be painted behind the simulated veil. This false inference, characteristic of works of trompe I'oeil,indicates that the deception retains a grip on Zeuxis even as he sees through it. In short, Parrhasios triumphs by creating a lure at a second-order level. Zeuxis, by contrast, only manages a natural,first-orderlure, one strictlyfor the birds. Such second-order lures are exemplifiednot only by works of trompe I'oeilbut also by masks. Masks simulate faces. Forthe most part, however, viewers see through the simulation: they know the masks are not really faces. (The episode withthe pikiindicates that even the youngest Hopichildren knew that the Katcina masks were not really Gods.) Despite knowing better, however, a viewer may act as if there is, after all, something behind the mask. Inother words, even as he sees through it, a viewer may remain trapped by the mask's deception. In such cases, the mask functions as a second-order lure.22 In cases like this, Lacan argues, the deception traps viewers precisely because they see through it; in particular,they are trapped by the pleasure of seeing through what they have seen: What is itthat attracts and satisfies us in trompe I'oeil?What is it that it captures our attention and delights us? At the moment when, by a mere shift of our gaze, we are able to realize that the representation does not move with the gaze and that it is merely a trompe I'oeil? (Concepts, 112) The scopic drive is the mechanism that springs the trap in such cases. By seeing through the mask's deception, viewers place themselves on view; that is, they look at theirown seeing. Inthis way,they engage the raw materi22. In the case of worksof trompeI'oeil,the deceptionconcerns the object ratherthan its relation the subject;that is, the subject is deceived aboutthe realitycorresponding to to the appearance. In the case of the mask, a certainambiguity obtains:is it the mask about which the subject is deceived, about whetherit constitutes a real face; or is the deception in connectionwiththe more general question of whethersomeone is looking at the subjectfromthe direction the mask? of

124 boundary / Spring 2 1997 als from which the scopic drive is constructed, namely, the twinned needs to see and be seen (Concepts, 182-83). The pleasure that emerges from such engagements indicates that a drive structure has locked into place. In addition to pleasure, anxiety is produced, embodied in a certain quality that attaches itself to the mask. Such anxiety arises beof Unheimlichkeit cause, although the drive structure provides "certainoutlets that go some it way to satisfying the pleasure principle," never totally makes up for the it is supposed to provide an answer. In that respect, the drive lack to which reproduces as much as it compensates for the subject's lack. And insofar as the subject then fails to cover it over, the drive functions as a repetition (Wiederholung)of lack and thus as a source of anxiety: "anxietyintroduces to us, with the greatest accent of communicability, the function of the lack or fault."23 The visual gymnastics of seeing oneself seeing, on which the functioning of the mask depends, is possible only if subjects view themselves from a place other than the one from which they are looking. They thus create a split in themselves, homologous with Emile Benveniste's split between the speaking and spoken subjects. Thus, the mask is associated with another deficiency, or lack, in subjects, manifested as a failureto be selfto sufficient, as it were, that is, as an inability see themselves fromthe place from which they are looking. In the usual course of operation of the drive, however, subjects manage to cover over this deficiency, in the same way that the distinction between the speaking and spoken subjects is elided in the course of ordinaryspeech. Such concealment is also an aspect of the Freudian process of repression (Verdringung), by which the productionof pleasure is concealed. Inthe context of his discussion of the mask, Lacan introduces a new object that occupies the role of object of the scopic drive, namely,the gaze.
23. Quoted from Lacan'sunpublishedSeminarX, in Samuel Weber, Returnto Freud: Camof Jacques Lacan'sDislocation Psychoanalysis,trans.MichaelLevine(Cambridge: Press, 1992), 153. See also Languageof Psychoanalysis,37-39, 379, bridgeUniversity anxieties. between realisticand unrealistic fora discussion of anxietyand the distinction in Lacanfollowshis account of the Fort-Dagame by a modification which he himself and took on the roleof "living signifier," thus took up the positionof the cotton-reel(ConLacan into pickinghim up That is, by screaming,his grandchild manipulated cepts, 63). as him putting downlater),thus reducingLacanto the same function (and,by implication, and retreating the approaching cotton-reel.The presence of anxiety in association with this game is evidentfromLacan'sreferenceto the childas "traumatized the factthat I by was manifested,according traumabeinga code here foranxiety.(Thetrauma was going," to Lacan,in the child'scontinuouscrying.)

Krips/ Fetishand the NativeSubject 125 He introduces the gaze as a distortionof the viewer's visual field created by the mask, a distortionthat, likethe anamorphic image of a skull in Holbein's painting The Ambassadors, signals to the viewer that he is being deceived, thus constituting a limitto his deception (Concepts, 95-96, 85-90).24 The eyeholes are focuses forthis effect. Because they are void, they failto match the rest of the simulated face, thus signaling that the mask is not really a face. There is, however, an additionaldimension to the distortion,one that reinstates the deception even as it is uncovered. The eyeholes promptthe viewers to speculate: "whogoes there, who looks at me looking?"That is, even as they recognize that it is merely a mask, they feel themselves the object of a look coming from its vicinity.In short, the mask's deception retains a grip. (In Lacan's terms: "man ... knows how to play with the mask"

[Concepts, 107].) Such deception, we have seen, lies at the heart of the scopic drive.Thus, the gaze as immediate cause of that deception operates here as objet a in the sense of object of the drive. The mask, by contrast, is the lure:the concrete object carryingthe object of the drive in the field of its effects. As Lacan says, the mask is "thatbeyond which there is the gaze" (Concepts, 107). The relation between mask and gaze provides a means of understandingthe relationof the cotton-reel in the Fort-Dagame to the objet a in the sense of object of the drive. In the context of the Fort-Da game, the cotton-reel, likethe mask, functions as a second-order lure. Specifically,the game involves a double deception. The child's first move is to deceive himself:throwingaway the cotton-reel in order to fool himself that, like his mother,the cotton-reel has gone away. By yanking it back, however, he shows himself up, or exposes his self-deception. The initialdeception continues to retain some sort of grip, however. If not, then the game would lose its point after the first pass. Thus, the distortionof the visual field created by the sudden reappearances and disappearances of the cotton-reel causes the double deception characteristic of the scopic drive.25 In short,
24. As Lacanputs it, the gaze is likea phantomlimb:"thisungraspable organ,this object that we can only circumvent, short this false organ"(Concepts,196). He also equates in the gaze with the ephemeral "gleamof light": play of lightand opacity . . . [which] "a in the ambiguity the jewel"(Concepts,96). of always participates 25. Manychildren'sgames involvesuch ambiguousmoments of open self-deceptions. Considerthe squeals of fear and delightaccompanying game of peekaboo,as children a themselves by pretending make everything to vanish,including themselves, only frighten to bringit all backagain. Note, too, that the game of Fort-Da,in its very form,openly entails a split withinthe how a child-subjects: else can they manage to foolthemselves if not by openlyinhabiting split between themselves as the ones who are fooled and the ones who fool? Itis in this

2 126 boundary/ Spring 1997 like here takes on the formof the gaze; and the cotton-reel, the distortion the gaze in the field the mask,functionsas a second-order lure,carrying withit.26 of its effects without Thus, Lacan'sclaim formally being identical is XI earlyin Seminar thatthe cotton-reel the objeta emerges as trueonly Intermsof the moredetailedanalytic to a firstapproximation.27 apparatus he develops laterin SeminarXI,his earlyclaimmustbe revisedby taking for as the gaze as the objeta: a sort of phantom lining the cotton-reel lure.

This Lacanian accountof the originsof pleasureand desire in relathe tion to the lureand objeta offersa convenientpathto understanding Freudtells us, repressionis natureof fetishism.Incertaincircumstances, not so muchdestroyedas breachedto the pointwhere the subject sysof recognizesthe importance the objeta (orof the lurebehind tematically extendsnotonlyto the level whichthe objeta is located).Such recognition of consciousness but also to the level of practice(connaissance).At the that same time,however, persiststo some extent; is, the subject repression to of desireinvariousways,inthose respectsfailing the foregrounds object recognizethe lure'simportance. of Insuch a situation a systematic,butnottotal,breachof repression, the lurebecomesthe fetish:an objectof systematiccare andattention that, to excessive in relation the effortexundernormal circumstances, appears pended on the objectof desire. The subject,then, marksthis ambiguous that it to relation the lurebysituating as an objectof disavowal: "knowing" it left in its "but is unimportant even so"recognizing importance waystypically As Joan Copjecmakesthe point:"thesubject'ssimultaneous unspecified. the "between as and affirmation denialof loss"is transcribed a contradiction
childishquality lack and displayof theirown splitting the corresponding thatthe uniquely of the game resides. Foradults,forwhomsuch knowledgeof theirown lackhas been resense), such a game is impossible.Indeed, pressed (verdringt,in the technicalFreudian as we shall see, the nearestthe adultcomes is engaging inthe formsof fetishism,which, of throughthe processes of disavowal,approachthe more or less open declaration lack of characteristic the Fort-Da. and splitting 26. I am not claimingthe scopic as the sole modalityin whicha driveforms in the condimensionas well, it text of the Fort-Dagame. On the contrary, involvesan invocatory manifestedin the child'saccompanyingscreams: "Fort... Da."For present purposes, however,I restrictmyselfto consideringthe scopic dimension. "To 27. Or,as he puts it somewhatmorecarefully: this object we willlatergive the name it bears in the Lacanianalgebra-the petit a" (Concepts,62).

Krips/ Fetishandthe Native Subject 127 disavowal that produces the fetish object [namely the mask] and an avowal In that allows subjects to do without it."28 this way, the subject indirectly affirms what is denied by the still partiallyeffective processes of repression, namely, the subject's lack, or the equivalent gap between the pursuit of desire and the productionof pleasure: "itis importantto recall Freud's several warnings against possible misunderstandings: the construction of the fetish does not itself reveal, except in certain 'very subtle' cases, the subject's simultaneous affirmationand denial of loss."29

Unmaskingthe Katcina
In the opening section of this paper, I argued that priorto initiation, the Katcina mask was employed as a threat to make children behave. It thus prevented them from getting what they really wanted. And, like the cotton-reel in the Fort-Da game, it provided an object around which children's activities circulated. They carefully approached the mask on dance days, fascinated and terrifiedby the prospect of falling under its eye, then, with howls of mixed delight and horror,quicklywithdrewto a safe position of invisibility fromwhich they could see withoutbeing seen before venturing out again to try their luck. Such dovetailed activities of seeing and being seen, likethe successive throwings-awayand retrievalsof the Fort-Da, set in place the scopic drive, and along with it the creation of pleasure as well as anxiety. Signs of such effects are apparent in the behavior of the young Hopi children. And, as in the Fort-Da,desire emerged from such activities, enabling the masks to take on the role of object-cause of desire.30 Inthe context of this process, the Katcina mask (like the cotton-reel in the context of the Fort-Dagame) played the role of lure, and thus a front, or screen, for the gaze as objet a. Afterthe revelation and counterrevelationof initiation,however, the Katcinano longer functionedas threats:sources of divine retribution misfor behavior. Instead, as Taleyseva tells us, the young Hopi initiates behaved well out of a sense of responsibilityratherthan fear: "After painfulproof this when childish belief has been demystified, [he] continues [his] existence as
28. Joan Copjec,Read MyDesire (Cambridge: Press, 1994), 113. MIT 29. Copjec, Read MyDesire, 113. 30. I am not claiming,of course, that any such dovetailingsof seeing and being seen resultin a drivestructure. the contrary, is the paradoxical by no means universal On it and combination anxietyand pleasure associated withthe children's of earlyvisual relations to the Katcina that signals thatthe drivewas at workin such situations.

2 128 boundary / Spring 1997 an adult: something has, so to speak, crossed the divide (that is the definition of initiation)... from that time he [Taleyseva] took care to do what was good."31 The Katcina masks continued to fillthe role of lure screening the objet a, however. Such continuitywas enabled not only by their continuing role as masks but also by the fact that many of the "good practices" acquired in childhood survived into adulthood, practices that, since they were organized originallyto selectively attract and avoid the attention of the Katcina, continued to carry the imprintof the masks at their center. In short, the masks survived in their role as lures screening the gaze as objet a in much the same way that the oral drive continues to be organized around the breast long after childrenhave been weaned. Moreover,by playing with the deception that the masks are Gods-first underminingit (via the revelation) and then reinforcingit in qualified form (via the myth)-the initiationpositioned the mask as a second-order lure screening the gaze as corresponding objet a. As I indicated in the previous section, by becoming a site of disavowal, a lure is transformed into a fetish. The Katcina mask exemplifies such an object. The relevant disavowal takes the characteristicform noted by Copjec: "between the disavowal that produces the fetish object [namely, the mask] and an avowal that allows subjects to do without it."'32Specifically, it takes the form of a contradiction between the assertion that the Gods inhabitthe masks in an invisiblefashion and the observation that the masks are empty, a contradictionrepeated at the level of Hopi practices as a tension between being a responsible adult and acting out of fear of the Katcina. According to Freud, such imbricatedstructures of desire, practices, and disavowals are constitutive of perverse forms of subjectivity.The element of perversion resides not in the unusual or socially unacceptable nature of the object of desire but rather in the way in which the structure brings to the surface, albeit indirectly,the gap between the production of pleasure and the achievement of desire. That is, by deferringaccess to the object of desire and lingeringwiththe corresponding lure in its role as fetish, the perverse subject shows that pleasure resides in engaging the fetish ratherthan the object of desire. In short, the perverse subject constitutes
a 31. Apres cette 6preuve penibleou la croyance infantile 6t6 d6mentie,elle peut donc continuerson existence sous une forme adulte:quelque chose a pourainsi dire passe il soin de fairece de de I'autre ... c6t6 (c'est la definition I'initiation) dor6navant prendra "Je 16-17). qui est bien (Mannoni, sais bien," 32. Copjec, Read MyDesire,113.

Krips/ Fetishandthe NativeSubject 129 a novel type of subjectivityfor which agency resides not as it does for the normalsubject in tryingto get what one wants but ratherin stickingwith the impediments to desire.33 Hunting the Fetish The structure of fetishism uncovered by Mannoni in the context of Hopi initiationrituals is also evident in various cases discussed by LeviStrauss. Among the Ojibwa and Algonquin, the totem is an element in a system of norms restrictingpartners with whom individualstraded, ate, cohabited, and so on. Inthis way, it acts as a systematic guide but also as an impedimentto achieving new and desirable alliances. The totem also functions as an object of the invocatorydrive. The totemic animal, L6vi-Strausstells us, is "killed and eaten, with certain ritual that permission had first to be asked of the animal, and precautions, viz., apologies be made to it afterwards."34 What are we to make of such postmortem apologies? Are they merely empty rituals, or do the Ojibwathink the dead can hear, that somehow the animal's spirit hears the apologies? Accordingto Levi-Strauss,the Ojibwaare perfectlyclear that an animal's totemic nature does not imply any special connection with the spirit world:"'It'sonly a name,' they said to the investigator"(Totemism,21). Instead, the apologies seem to be addressed as much to what lies behind the animal as to the animal itself. In Durkheimianterms, the animal operates as a "sacred" object, as a point of condensation for the system of norms governing and constitutingthe social order;or, in WalterBenjamin's terms, the totemic animal takes on an "auratic" dimension; that is, it functions as a reificationof the social orderas a whole. The totem may,then, be understood as in a prosopopoeic relationto this aura, as a fictionalabstract for as particular which the animal itself provides a "front," it were, a concrete manifestation as well as a point of focus.35The Ojibwa'sapologies may be
33. Thatis, "normal" (nonperverse) subjects act as if, and may even thinkthat, pleasure is exclusivelythe resultof attaining objectof desire, and gettingaroundthe objeta is the merelya means to such an end. 34. ClaudeLevi-Strauss,Totemism, trans. RodneyNeedham (NewYork: Beacon, 1963), 21. Hereafter, workis cited parenthetically Totemism. this as 35. Levi-Strauss, one, was keen to divorcehimselffromany connectionsbetweenthe for the religiousand totemic orders.That is, for L6vi-Strauss, religioushas to do withthe spiritworld(whichthe Ojibwa designate as manido),whichcuts across the totemicorder of ototeman(Totemism, 22). Thus, because of the religiousconnotationsof the term 18, is sacred, Benjamin's terminology less misleadinghere than Durkheim's.

2 130 boundary / Spring 1997 understood, then, as directed equivocally not only to the hunted animal but also to the "totem" that, in some unspecified way, the animal embodies.36 Not only does the hunter address the animal/totem but the totem also addresses the hunter through the medium of the animal to whom he addresses his remarks. I do not mean "address"here in the Althusserian sense of "interpellation" "hailing" or (although it is true, of course, that the field of practices lying behind the totem "hail" hunter in this sense). Inthe stead, I mean that in a literalsense, the animal/totem leads the hunter to enter into a dialogic situation, although not, of course, into actual dialogue. Specifically, by fallingto his arrows, the animal functions as a cause of the hunter retrospectively presenting himself as listening for, and even, in a metaphoric sense, getting an answer to, his muttered imprecations. Jean-Paul Sartre's story of looking through a keyhole, as retold by Lacan, makes a similarpoint:
The gaze that surprises me and reduces me to shame .
. .

is, not a

seen gaze, but a gaze imagined by me in the field of the Other.... [F]arfrom speaking of the emergence of this gaze as of something that concerns the organ of sight, he [Sartre] refers to the sound of rustlingleaves, suddenly heard while out hunting,to a footstep heard
in a corridor ... [a]t the moment when he has presented himself in

the action of looking through a keyhole. A gaze surprises him in the function of voyeur, disturbs him, overwhelms him and reduces him to a feeling of shame. (Concepts, 84) Here, an intrusionfromoutside the domain of the scopic- namely,the noise of a footfall-precipitates the voyeuristic Sartre into a field in which he falls under the eye of an Other located ambiguously within his field of visibility. The overwhelminganxiety, or, in Sartre's case, shame, associated with the experience betrays the identityof the interlocuteras the Other. In the same way, the death in which the Ojibwa hunt culminates functions as confirmationfrom outside the invocatoryfield that the hunter's prayers have been heard, a hearing that comes froma source ambiguously positioned in relationto the field of speech, embracing both the animal and its totem.37 And, as in the case of Sartre's story of peering throughthe keyhole, the anxieties associated with the activity(forexample, "Will arrow my
36. Ina similar way,to lookat a mask is to lookboth at its visiblefrontsurfaceas well as to lookforthe hiddenand inscrutable space behindit, on its Otherside. the for 37. Thatis, I cannot identify interlocutor whose replyI am listening.

Krips/ Fetishandthe NativeSubject 131 find its mark?" "HaveIperformedthe appropriateritualscorrectly?") identify the hunter's interlocuteras located in the field of the Other.38 The circularmovement of the hunter speaking and being spoken to by his prey is accompanied by certain characteristic pleasures of the hunt: Such pleasures, and the asso"Mytotem is strong, see what I have killed!" ciated anxieties, indicate that in the context of the practices of the hunt, the twinned activities of speaking and being spoken to set in trainan invocatory drivestructure. Inthis context, the animal functions not only as the concrete entitytowardwhich the hunterdirects his words and fromwhich he receives a reply but also as a second-order lure. That is, at an invocatorylevel, the hunter is self-deceived in his relation to the animal. Specifically, by going through a form of apology to the animal for killingit, the hunter enacts the deception of talkingto the animal,which inturnpresupposes that the animal hears what he says. At the same time, however, he comes up against limits to this deception. In particular,he knows that the animal does not hear him when it is dead. Even while the animal is being hunted, there is no question of a dialogue between hunter and hunted. Nevertheless, the deception of talkingwiththe animal exerts a residualgrip,which is proven by the fact that the hunter experiences the animal's slaying as "an answer to his prayers," if not literally, then at least as an event that transforms his invocatoryfield into a site of a dialogical exchange withthe Other.39 this way, the hunter's In practice of talking with the animal takes on the form of a distorted invocatory field. Specifically, it involves a self-deception that overtly incorporates its own limit point around which the hunter then plays. Such a distortion constitutes an objet a in the context of the invocatorydrive. Lacan's name forthis objet a is "thevoice." Inshort, the hunter'sinvocatoryrelationto the totemic animal as lure creates the voice as objet a.40
38. The animal'saurahelped it encompass this function the Other.Thatis, because of of its aura,the totemicanimalprovided pointof focus forexternalnormative a pressureson the hunter;and this, in turn,aided the illusionby whichthe hunterprojected animal's the actionsas signals directedto himselffromthe animal,signals thatcarried authority the as wellas inscrutability characteristic the Other.Thisquestionof the relation of betweenthe Otherand the aura as condensationand reification the social is touched on indirectly of in my "Interpellation, Marxism no. 4 (1995): 7, Antagonismand Repetition," Rethinking 59-71, where it surfaces as the relationbetween repetitionsin the Freudian sense and sense. antagonismsin Laclauand Mouffe's 39. The rustleof leaves functionsin a similarway in Sartre'sstory of the voyeurat the driveis scopic rather thaninvocatory. keyhole.Inthe contextof Sartre'sstory,the relevant 40. Inthis context,the huntedanimal'sdeath plays a dual role:not only introducing the the subjectto an exchange withthe Otherbutalso reimposing initial deceptionand thus

2 132 boundary / Spring 1997 The totemic animal is also a site of disavowal, an imbricatedsystem of contradictions of both practicaland cognitive kinds that asserts as well as denies the importance of the objet a. To be specific, on the one hand Ojibwaand Algonquinpractices and beliefs suggest a commitmenton their partto an affinitybetween totem and clan members. On the other, as I have indicated above, Ojibwa clan members protest that the totem is no more than a name, and the Algonquintake the matter of an affinitybetween clan
members and their totems as a fit topic for jokes: "The Algonquin ... [told] jokes such as 'My totem is the wolf, yours the pig. . . . Take care! Wolves eat pigs'" (Totemism, 22).41 This discursive contradictionis echoed at the

practical level. Specifically, it reappears as a conflict between the already noted ritualapologies to totemic animals before killingor eating them and a certain casualness concerning their extinction:"althoughthe caribou had completely disappeared fromSouthern Canada, this fact did not at all worry the members of the clan named after it"(Totemism,21).42Thus, the totemic animal takes on the characteristics of a fetish: not only a lure screening a corresponding objet a (the voice) but also a site of disavowal echoed at the level of practice. The fetishistic nature of the totem is confirmed by the peculiar lack of affect attending the disaster of the vanishing totems, such as the caribou.43 Such lack of affect is characteristicof engagement withthe
of the constituting play aroundlimitscharacteristic the objeta. By contrast,in the case of Sartre'svisitto the keyhole,the rustleof leaves only plays the firstof these roles. Far the fromreimposing initial deceptionthat he is unseen, it serves to breakit up. were to occur merelyat the level of of 41. Note that if recognition the totem'simportance practice,in varioushuntingand eating rituals,for example,then the situationwouldbe thanfetishism. one of repressionrather intellectual difficulas 42. The domainof practicethus functioned an arenaforexfoliating ties aboutthe totem'sstatus, in the same way that Hopipracticesacted as an arena for out concerningthe status of the Katcinamasks. working difficulties 43. Since the totem is a fetish, its vanishingsignals an end to pleasure,thus repeating reactionto Lack woundthat Freudcalls "trauma." of affectis one characteristic the primal such a catastrophe(a pointthat Lacanmakes in the contextof his discussion of Freud's . case of the shell-shockedneurotic:"the memoryof the heavy bombing-raid . . from which his neurosis derives . . does not seem, when he is awake, to botherhim either way"(Concepts,51). the Takingthe totem as lure helps make more understandable distinctionbetween dwells at some length.Subjects liketo totem and guardianspiriton which L6vi-Strauss have a guardian spirit,itseems, and workhardto get one, butthey do not care muchone or the otherabouttheirtotem.A certainanxietyattends relationswiththe totem,but, way to than attachingdirectly it:"Atmost rather by and large, desire relates to it tangentially hintsof physicaland moraldistinctions therewere reported (Totemism, [betweentotems]" indeed a matterof lifeor death, to belongto a 22). This is not to deny that it is important,

Krips/ Fetishand the NativeSubject 133 fetish, because, although the fetish gets all the perverse subject's attention, it does not comprise his object of desire.44 In sum, the Freudianapproach explains and assimilates aspects of Levi-Strauss'smaterialsthat his own structuralist approach marginalizesby either dismissing them as jokes (jokes do not seem to enjoy the same significance for Levi-Strauss that they assume from a Freudian perspective) or leaving them as anomalies. A similarsituation, I now argue, is evident in connection with Levi-Strauss's discussion of the Oedipus myth.45 Man, Wife, and Boy According to Levi-Strauss, the Oedipus myth functioned in the classical Greek context as a means of exploring a contradiction between traditionalbelief in autochthony (born of the earth) and an experientially grounded belief in sexual procreation as applied to the origins of man.46
totem;indeed, all the native'ssubsequent ritual practicestake place withina framework constructedin terms of that object. The totem itself, however,appears to be peculiarly lackingas a site of desire: not so muchan object as a propfordesire.These are exactly the characteristics the lure:on the wayto desire, butnot itselfdesired.Inshort,itseems of that the distinction between the guardianspiritand totem correspondsto that between the lureand the objectof desire. This suggestion fits well withLevi-Strauss's otherclaim that the guardianspiritis associated withcausal (or religious)modes of thought,that is, withmetonymy, since the latteris the tropeassociated withdesire. Italso fitswithLacan's viewthatthe objeta as screened by the lureis the firstsignifier, thus associated with and also being,as L6vi-Strauss metaphor, notes, the tropeassociated withtotemic metaphor similarities between the set of totems and the relations,since they depend on structural set of clans. 44. Although must not equate desire withaffect.See Concepts,217. one 45. The case of the Ojibwa totem also indicateshow,despite theirinternal cognitivedissonances, fetishisticstructuresmay comprisethe "bestchance"fortraditional, strongly boundedsocieties. That is, despite disavowing theirauthority, fetishistis scrupulous the in payingrespectto ritualrestrictions. example,the Ojibwa For respect the varioushuntassociated withtheirtotem, whiledenyingits source of authority: "I ing and eating rituals knowthetotemis onlya name." Such respect is motivated merelybythe contradictory not avowalthat "but the same it is important respect the rituals" rather the pleaall to but by sures of negotiating modus vivendiwiththe framework prohibitions. a of Such pleasures may,indeed, be the only ones the fetishistgets, since his own desires are sacrificedon the altarof the Other.The normaldesiringsubject,by contrast,continually tries breaking thus constituting greatersource of a throughthe objeta and its associated restrictions, to disruption the social orderthan structuresof disavowaland perversion. 46. Claude Levi-Strauss,Structural trans. ClaireJacobson and BrookeAnthropology, Grundfest Schoepf (Harmondsworth: Penguin,1979),216. Levi-Strauss designates traditionalbeliefs as "theoretical."

2 134 boundary / Spring1997 The contradictionin question may be expressed in terms of the following disavowal: "Iknow that I am born of man and woman (experience tells me so) but even so (theory tells me) I am born of the earth."The contradiction was extended by the classical Greek system of metaphor and rituals that, by associating woman/womb/birthwith nature/soil/the cultivation of plants, allowed the contradictionto be reframed as a disavowal concerning woman's lack of reproductiveself-sufficiency: "Iknow that man is the productof intercourse between husband and wife but even so he is born of earth-woman-wifealone." Accordingto Levi-Strauss, the Oedipus myth showed this disavowal to be equivalent to a "realcontradiction" afflictingclassical Greek social life: that of deciding between two marital strategies, endogamy (marryingin) and exogamy (marryingout), or, as Levi-Strauss puts it, between overrating blood relations and undervaluingthem: Althoughthe problem [the contradictionbetween the two models for the origin of man] cannot be solved, the Oedipus myth provides a kindof logical tool which relatedthe originalproblem-born fromone or born from two?-to the derivative problem:born from differentor born fromsame? By a correlationof this type, the overratingof blood relations is to the underratingof blood relations as the attempt to escape autochthony is to the impossibilityto succeed in it.47 Thus the myth implied that settling on a marriage partner involved more than a privatearrangement of who lives with whom: the origins of humanity (is man autochthonous or the result of sexual reproduction?)and his place in the universe were in the balance as well. These imbricatedcognitive and practicalcontradictionsdisplayed a structure of fetishism for which the mother's lack, represented in this case by her lack of reproductiveself-sufficiency, filled the role of fetish.48 How216. Structural 47. L6vi-Strauss, Anthropology, the no evidence that the structureof fetishismsurrounding 48. presents Levi-Strauss childhoodrevelation that, like the unmaskingof the Oedipus mythincludes a traumatic As for Katcina origin the structure. I indicated amongthe Hopi,constitutesa realhistorical however,there may, in fact, be no such origin;local stories to the contrarymay above, be merelyfictionsthat take on significancepurelyretrospectively, the way in which by Instead, what matters is the imbrithey organize subjects' subsequent self-narratives. of cated structure disavowaland perversionthat, accordingto Freud,repeats the primal experienceof separationfromthe mother.Similarremarksapplyto the totem among the Ojibwa.

Krips/ Fetishand the NativeSubject 135 ever, whereas the Hopi initiationmyth functioned exclusively as a site of avowal ("buteven so the Gods are in the masks"), the Oedipus mythfunctioned as a means of staging both the avowal ("buteven so man comes from woman/earth alone") and its denial ("womanis lacking/needs a man"). Indeed, the Oedipus mythwent even furtherby inflectingthe resultantcontradictionout of the domain of cosmological schemes intothe domain of marital strategies, thus adding the practicaldimension requiredby disavowals. In this case, as for fetishism generally, the object of desire resided somewhere other than the fetish. That is, in the classical as well as Hellenic Greek context, man's object of desire was the eromenos, the young male lover, relations with whom were in uneasy tension with the adult male's responsibilityto the oikos, the household and its attendant women embodied in the figure of the mother and wife. As Michel Foucault argues, the tension here was not so much between homosexuality and heterosexuality,or even between love of boys and an ethic of maritalfidelity(which in any case seems to have been a later Roman and Christiandevelopment); instead, it arose from a conception of the adult male as one who loved the beautiful, whether male or female, but who also exhibited suitable moderation and self-control in his daily life: Insofar as he was married . . a man needed to restrict his pleasures ... but being marriedin this case meant, above all, being the head of a family.... This is why reflectionon marriageand the good behaviour of husbands was regularlycombined with reflectionconcerning the oikos (house and household). . . . For the wife, having

sexual relations only with her husband was a consequence of the fact that she was under his control. For the husband, having sexual relationsonly withhis wife was the most elegant way of exercising his control.This was not nearly so much the prefiguration a symmetry of that was to appear in the subsequent ethics, as it was the stylization of an actual dissymmetry.49 Thus, a familiarpattern emerges: man's access to the object of his desire blocked by, or in tension with, sexual relations with his wife; these, in turn, functioning as practical embodiments of her lack, expressed here in terms of a lack of reproductiveself-sufficiency. In short, the fetish, as embodiment of woman/mother'slack, blocks man's access to the object of his
49. MichelFoucault, The Use of Pleasure: The Historyof Sexuality Volume2, trans. RobertHurley RandomHouse, 1988), 150-51. (New York:

2 136 boundary / Spring1997 desire. Inthis case, however, the structureemerges directly ratherthan as mediated by the substitutionof woman's lack through a combination of lure and corresponding drive object. This is not to deny that in this case the drive mediates the connection between the object of desire and the fetish. On the contrary,as Lacan emphasizes, whenever sexual relations between man and woman become heated, the drive is always likely to intervene in some form or other (he singles out the scopic as the likely form of drive): "Itis no doubt through the mediation of masks that the masculine and the feminine meet in the most acute, most intense way" (Concepts, 107). However, such interventions merely constitute variations on the structure of fetishism already displayed in relations between the wife and the eromenos.50That is, the objet a, around which the intervening drive circulated, functioned as a substitute for what woman lacked, or, equivalently,for the fact of her lack. Thus, the relation of the objet a to the eromenos as man's object of desire merely repeated the relationbetween that desire and woman's lack.

Conclusion
The fetish, I have argued, is a lure screening the objet a at the center of a network of practices that divert a subject from attending to his desire. It is also an object of disavowal, the site of a real contradiction ramifying withinthe subject's discursive, as well as nondiscursive, practices. Freudian theory explains how such fetishistic structures play a constitutive role by acting as sites at which the usual processes of repression are breached, thus leading to a perverse formof subjectivity,in which the constitutive split at the heart of the subject is exposed. I have argued for the presence of such structures in three cases: among the Hopi, the Ojibwa, and the Hellenic Greeks. In each case, the structure'spresence is signaled not merely by a generalized homology between contradictorybeliefs and the classical Freudianformulafor disavowal of the sort to which Bhabha draws attention. Instead, the case for a fetishistic structure of desire depends on a detailed exploration of local connections between repressed knowledge, anxiety, pleasure, beliefs, and practices.

50. Lacan claims, allegedly followingFreud,that there is no specificallysexual drive; all rather, drivesare what he calls partialdrives,by being sexual in nature:sublimations of the sexual. See Concepts,166, 177,189.