Liberation Philosophy, Anti-Fetishism, and Decolonization
Main Article Content
Abstract
The trope of fetishization is central to Latin American liberation philosophy and its proposal for an “anti-fetishist” method. In this essay, I offer a genealogy of the trope of fetishization in the work of the Argentine-Mexican philosopher of liberation Enrique Dussel. Engaging recent work in cultural anthropology that demonstrates how the notion of “fetishism” develops out of a one-sided Eurocentric anthropology of religion that misrepresents elements of Afro-Atlantic religions, I argue that without a serious revision of the metaphysical premises of “anti-fetishism,” liberation philosophy risks perpetuating a Eurocentrism that runs counter to the interests of epistemic decolonization to which it is committed. This essay therefore concludes by outlining the prospects of a decolonial “anti-fetishist” method that might overcome the Eurocentric misapprehension of Afro-Atlantic religions.
Article Details
JWP is an open access journal, using a Creative Commons license. Authors submitting an article for publication to JWP agree on the following terms:
- The Author grants and assigns to the Press the full and exclusive rights during the term of copyright to publish or cause others to publish the said Contribution in all forms, in all media, and in all languages throughout the world.
- In consideration of the rights granted above, the Press grants all users, without charge, the right to republish the Contribution in revised or unrevised form, in any language, and that it carries the appropriate copyright notice and standard form of scholarly acknowledgement as applicable under the CC-BY license.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.