In academic discourse, racial fetishism is a postcolonialist term found in the writings of authors such as Homi K. Bhabha, Anne McClintock and Kobena Mercer. The term combines elements of the Freudian psychoanalytic fetish and the Marxist commodity fetish, and is used in the context of British, Spanish and French colonialism and imperialism and their aftereffects. The term has as its origins Frantz Fanon's epidermal schema and Edward Said's Orientalism.
Homi Bhabha defined the idea of a racial fetish in contrast to the idea of the Freudian sexual fetish which he describes a denial of difference, where the male sees the female as a castrated male, seeing missing parts rather than a different anatomy. Similar to Freud's idea of a fetish, Bhabha defines racial fetish to be a fixation on other races being not different, but lesser or "mutilated" versions of the white male.
Read more about this topic: Ethnic Pornography
Famous quotes containing the word racial:
“Most young black females learn to be suspicious and critical of feminist thinking long before they have any clear understanding of its theory and politics.... Without rigorously engaging feminist thought, they insist that racial separatism works best. This attitude is dangerous. It not only erases the reality of common female experience as a basis for academic study; it also constructs a framework in which differences cannot be examined comparatively.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)