Spirit of Matter

Peter Pels is a Professor of Anthropology of Africa at the University of Leiden. He edited the journal Social Anthropology (2003-2007) and advised the Çatalhöyük excavation project led by Ian Hodder (2005-14). His most recent publication is Museum Temporalities: Time, History and the Future of the Ethnographic Museum (Routledge, 2023) which is co-edited with Wayne Modest.

“I consider this to be a brilliant piece of research creating a highly original intervention in material culture studies. In particular the debates on materiality and matter and the intellectual history of the concept of fetishism and its transformation of meaning in Europe from the 16th century to the present.” • Michael Rowlands, University College London“[A book] with considerable value. It is a compelling read, that has some important interventions to make concerning the nature of the material within modernity.” • Jon Mitchell, University of Sussex

• List of FiguresPrefaceAcknowledgmentsPart I: Introduction Chapter 1. The Auto-Icon, or: What a Secularist Relic Says about Modern DematerializationsChapter 2. Towards a Methodology of the ConcretePart II: Fetish and the Fear of MatterChapter 3. The Spirit of Matter: On Fetish, Rarity, Fact and FancyChapter 4. The Modern Fear of Matter: Reflections on the Protestantism of Victorian SciencePart III: Do Catholics See Things Differently?Chapter 5. Trophy and Wonder, or: Bodies at the ExhibitionChapter 6. Africa Christo! The Materiality of Photographs in Dutch Catholic Mission Propaganda, 1946-1960Chapter 7. “I am Black, but Comely”: Mission, Modernity and the Power of Objects in the Afrika Museum, Berg en DalChapter 8. Conclusion: The Powers of Miming “Africa”Part IV: The Time of ThingsChapter 9. Things in Time: Commodity Fetishism before AdvertisingChapter 10. False Consciousness? The Rise of AdvertisingIn Lieu of a Conclusion: The Future of ThingsReferencesIndex