ABSTRACT
Walter Benjamin, in addressing the fetish character of objecthood under capitalism, demystifying and reenchanting, out-fetishizing the fetish. In his 1961 essay "Anthropmorphic Figurines From Colombia, Their Magic and Art," the great Austrian-cum-Colombian anthropologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff states that "in certain curing ceremonies the sculptured or painted representation of these evil animal spirits is therefore of prime importance and therefore the shaman will make figurines of them and/or paint their forms on wooden slats." He refers the reader to an early essay by Erland Nordenskiold, in which he wrote, "In some way or another one can protect oneself from evil spirits by portraying them." Sliding between photographic fidelity and fantasy, between iconicity and arbitrariness, wholeness and fragmentation, one begin to sense how weird and complex the notion of the copy becomes, as they saw in the Emberá shaman's lusting for more—a will to power in the face of attack by copies of reality.
