The Spirit of Matter. Modernity, Religion, and the Power of Objects

What is it about?

This book uses examples from the history of "fetish" and "fetishism", ideas about "materialism" in science and religion, studies of museums and the uses of photography, and a reflection on commodity fetishisms and the history of advertising to rethink material culture theory. It main thesis is that students of material culture have not paid enough attention to "excessive" objects - objects that move people. If we do, we need a new methodology that pays attention to the encounter with concrete things, how our bodies respond to them, and how this makes any prediction of social relations becoming "dematerialized" highly unlikely.

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Why is it important?

The Spirit of Matter counters expectations that either capitalism or the digital revolution will make human beings less dependent on the control, ownership, possession, action, and decay of the material things that people rely on. The modern fantasy that we could 'master' our surroundings is destroyed by the awareness of "excessive" objects acting upon us - with the understanding that the most excessive and uncontrollable object that we confront is Planet Earth itself.

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