The aim of this article is to rethink what the anthropological term of fetish means. The discussion is based on the study of an ethnic society, in the south western of Rep. of Benin, Aja, who replace their individual destiny in a small pot and put it in their own room. An analysis of some (folk) terms on Aja's view of human being from a previous anthropological work was necessary to help us to fulfil our objective. The representation of human has been argued with the concept of the Person (/Individual), which is usually related with the concept of spirit, ancestor and destiny in African society because they did not separate our world with spiritual world. In Aja society there are two sorts of religious experts who hold many folk rituals. The former called Bokono is diviner who tells one's destiny (Se-Kpoli). The latter, Tashino is always an old woman (Madame-Tante) and she is in charge of the lineage (ako) ritual in which she installed the person's pot in the house, and she also prays when young men dig the pot out when the possessor died. When an Aja is dead, people bury the remaining in his/her room though his pot (his/her destiny) is dug out, carried away from the village. We do not explain the pot as a term of Symbol and Representation, because it must be his destiny itself. Describing the case, the work criticizes the anthropological way of using the term fetish, which has been regarded as representing something invisible or sacred and the latent premises of dichotomy-subject and object.

特集文化人類学の現代的課題
論文