Sexual fetishes are still understood as exceptions, as distortions to the sexual rule. I was wondering if it would not be easier to ask if it is possible to define what sexual normality is. If we follow Haverlock Ellis’ conception of fetishes as pertaining to three categories such as those related to the body, to inanimate objects or to acts and attitudes, one can start to wonder: wouldn’t fetishism be more common and richer than we may think? In our relation to images, sounds, our fluids, language and sensations ? Fetishism thus crystallizes in a variety of ways.  Thus, fetishism is contextual. It emerges within the history of individuals, groups, and societies in which it is inscribed and through technological developments. Our fetishes have a really social and cultural dimension.

In this issue, they will be unveiled sometimes as domination mechanisms, which reify individuals without their consent, with the tools of hegemonic power. But they will also reveal themselves — to our pleasure — as individual or collective responses to a problematic relation to the world, as emancipatory mechanisms or as creators of meaning, alternatives, and enjoyment — as empowerment.

How do contemporary actors (sex workers, writers, photographers, artists, communities, partners, lovers or long-time friends) seize and stretch the boundaries of what we see as fetishism? I invite you to discover how their points of view allow us to question the power relations, the gender norms, the relation to self and to otherness.

The main series of this issue is a collaboration between Jean-Vincent Simonet and performer and director Vex Ashley, co-founder of Four Chambers. An exclusive work, with an interview of Vex Ashley telling us about her fetishistic relationship to the image and the symbols that permeate her work.

Softcover
176 pages, 26 × 18.5 cm
2020