Subject: Commodity Fetishism
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 96 10:50:48 PDT


Can anyone help me on this one?
I'm engaged in research on commodity fetishism and I've reached a bit of an impasse on the question of 'sensuousness'  in Marx. 

William Pietz in his essay "Fetishism and Materialism: the limits of theory in Marx" in Apter and Pietz _Fetishism as Cultural Dscourse_  (1993 CUP),  explains that the term 'sensuous desire'  is taken directly from Hegel and gives a reference to Hegel's _Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion_. 
Pietz further points out that the term 'sensuous' plays a big part in Marx's re-thinking of Hegelianism and his critique of Feuerbach. Apter and Pietz 1993:137
Derrida, in _The Specters of Marx_ (Routledge 1994), also picks up on this point: "Marx does not say sensuous *and* non-sensuous, or sensuous *but* non-sensuous; he says: sensuous non-sensuous,  sensuous-supersensible." Derrida 1994:151
A footnote from the English translator warns us that the usual translation of Marx 'conjures away this difficulty' with "a thing which transcends sensuousness." Derrida 1994:192n.

Can anyone shed some more light on this argument? It may seem obscure, but I have a strong feeling that this topic is central to Marx's idea of the phantasmagoric.
Has anything been written on the sensuous and left-Hegelianism that might explain what is going on in more depth?
Finally, does anyone have an address for Pietz (E-mail or snail mail), or know where he is working?

Russell



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