Fetishist, Collector, Hoarder

This course is dedicated to three figures that lurk at the fringes of capitalism and seem to represent at once the epitome, the inverse, and even the undoing of its logics. Our aim will be to shed light on the contemporary obsession with hoarding by studying the hoarder in relation to two precursors of 19th and 20th century narrative and theory: the fetishist and the collector. We will examine the material practices and psychic mechanisms that define these identities and authorize distinctions between them, as well as the diverse historical contexts from which they emerge. More broadly, we will theorize the relationships between objects and narrative.