Extracted from publication Il senso immerso
Il senso emerso. L’esperienza del sacro attraverso i media-feticci
DOI: 10.53136/979122181652515
Pages: 309-336
Publication date: February 2025
Publisher: Aracne
This essay undertakes a reassessment of fetishist practices in the domain of religion and spirituality, aiming to restore significance to the notion of “fetishism” in religious, social and semiotic studies. This renewed attention is due to the increasing number of religious practices taking shape through media devices, which have always been objects of fetishistic fascination and worship. The parallel between religious and media fetishes appears to intersect in our postor a-modern contemporary setting: a sort of global village where media, once conceived as transparent intermediaries of dimensions transcending our ordinary experience, have become integral parts of our surrounding environment, capturing the attention and devotion of users and believers. Specifically, it will be observed how attempts to reconnect with the sacred, to experience the immersion within this transcendental reality through fetishes, are consistently countered by the emergence and the dissolution of the divine through the same objects within our social reality, until its total saturation. Whether it be fetishism or a more secular “factishism”, the sacred continually reveals (or re-veils) its irreducible transcendence.