Researcher Theory / CLiC
01.09.05 – 31.08.07
Christopher Gemerchak’s research project is the completion of his manuscript Fetishism and the Crystallization of Desire (working title). Fetishism has long been a concept permitting philosophers, psychoanalysts, anthropologists and cultural theorists to critically examine the nature of beliefs, sexual interests and material values, and it still is a vital interpretive paradigm today.
The focus of this research project will be on the development of a philosophical determination of fetishism as a response to a crisis of meaning, whether it be personal, social or religious. The fetish will be seen as mediating the crisis that arises when a system of meaning/value or the coordinates of identity is confronted with a threat of alienation, or worse, dissolution. This threat may arise from a traumatic figure of alterity, or from a loss of faith in a ground of certainty, which runs the risk of plunging the subject into a world of meaninglessness. The response to such a confrontation will be shown to have a profound influence on the life of desire; it may lead either to a transformation of everyday life into a world of excessive significance, or to an attempt to protect oneself against uncertainty through perverse repetition or an ideological refusal of change. The fact that these two trends may operate simultaneously in the construction of a fetish, points to its highly ambiguous nature: the subject looks for expansive meaning in the mundane objects of desire, yet blocks the proliferation of desire through fixation on a particular point over which it can maintain a sense of control.
Toldeo, US.
PhD Philosophy. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, BE.
MA Philosophy. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, BE.
BA Philosophy. Boston College, US.
Researcher and tutor. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, BE.
Seminar tutor. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, BE.
Member. International Phenomenology Symposium. Perugia, IT.
Translator. Various articles, essays and films.
(Ed.) Everyday extraordinary: Encountering fetishism with Marx, Freud and Lacan. Louvain, BE: Leuven University Press, (Figures of the Unconscious/Figures de l’Inconscient).
The Sunday of the negative: Reading Bataille reading Hegel. New York, US: SUNY Press (Series in Hegelian Studies).
Fetishism and bad faith: A Freudian rebuttal to Sartre. In: Janus Head: Journal of interdisciplinary studies, 7 (2), 248-269.
Fetishism, desire and finitude: The artful dodge. In: Everyday extraordinary: Encountering fetishism with Marx, Freud and Lacan. Louvain, BE: Louvain University Press.
The site of sublimation: From dualism to the dialectic. In: Tijdschrift voor filosofie, 65, pp. 439-463.
Heavy evanescence: Toward a sacrificial materialism. In: British society of phenomenology, summer conference. London, GB: Greenwich University.
Contemporary primitives: The enduring desire for significant objectivity. In: Leuven philosophical society annual conference. Fetishism and the objects of religion. Louvain, BE: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
The Other as a thing, the other as das Ding: Devaluing and revaluing the object in fetishism. In: Research in progress. Louvain, BE: Belgian Centre for Scientific Research, University of Louvain.
The search for the essential after Hegel. Louvain, BE: University of Louvain Research Council lecture series.
Fetishism and the objects of religion. Conference organizer. Louvain Philosophical Society Annual Conference. (November). Louvain, BE: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.