Editing Fetishism (section)

==History==
Initially, the [[Portuguese people|Portuguese]] developed the concept of the fetish to refer to the objects used in religious practices by West African natives.<ref name="Pietz 1985" /> The contemporary Portuguese {{Lang|pt|feitiço}} may refer to more neutral terms such as ''charm'', ''enchantment'', or ''[[abracadabra]]'', or more potentially offensive terms such as ''[[juju]]'', ''[[witchcraft]]'', ''witchery'', ''[[Conjuration (summoning)|conjuration]]'' or ''bewitchment''. The medieval [[Lollards]] issued polemics that anticipated fetishism.<ref name="Stanbury 2015 p. 31">{{cite book | last=Stanbury | first=S. | title=The Visual Object of Desire in Late Medieval England | publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated | series=The Middle Ages Series | year=2015 | isbn=978-1-5128-0829-2 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HkciCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA31 | access-date=2023-06-14 | page=31}}</ref>

The concept was popularized in Europe circa 1757, when [[Charles de Brosses]] used it in comparing West African religion to the [[Magic (paranormal)|magical]] aspects of [[ancient Egyptian religion]]. Later, [[Auguste Comte]] employed the concept in his theory of the [[evolution theory|evolution]] of [[religion]], wherein he posited fetishism as the earliest (most primitive) stage, followed by [[polytheism]] and [[monotheism]]. However, [[ethnography]] and [[anthropology]] would classify some artifacts of polytheistic and monotheistic religions as fetishes.

The eighteenth-century intellectuals who articulated the theory of fetishism encountered this notion in descriptions of "Guinea" contained in such popular voyage collections as Ramusio's ''Viaggio e Navigazioni'' (1550), de Bry's ''India Orientalis'' (1597), Purchas's ''Hakluytus Posthumus'' (1625), [[Awnsham Churchill|Churchill]]'s ''Collection of Voyages and Travels'' (1732), [[Thomas Astley|Astley]]'s ''A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels'' (1746), and Prevost's ''Histoire generale des voyages'' (1748).<ref name="Pietz 1987">{{cite journal|last=Pietz|first=William|author-link=William Pietz|date=Spring 1987|title=The Problem of the Fetish, II: The Origin of the Fetish|journal=RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics|volume=13|issue=13|pages=23–45|doi=10.1086/RESv13n1ms20166762|jstor=20166762|s2cid=151350653}}</ref>

The theory of fetishism was articulated at the end of the eighteenth century by [[G. W. F. Hegel]] in ''[[Lectures on the Philosophy of History]]''. According to Hegel, Africans were incapable of abstract thought, their ideas and actions were governed by impulse, and therefore a fetish object could be anything that then was arbitrarily imbued with "imaginary powers".<ref name=Astonishment&Power>{{cite book|last=MacGaffey|first=Wyatt|title=Astonishment & Power, The Eyes of Understanding: Kongo Minkisi|year=1993|publisher=National Museum of African Art}}</ref>