ABSTRACT
To trace a line from Freud to Fanon is to place before our very eyes the entire history of psychoanalysis. That would be a worthy endeavour, but one that would surely extend beyond the confines of this book. All that can be offered in its place, too little . . . almost nothing, surely not enough, are a few notes scattered here and there on the prehistory and the avatars of the fetish as it encounters (perhaps founds) the language of analysis. What follows in the next paragraphs should be read in the spirit of such initial and fragmented notes.
