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Abstract

In the mid-19th century Marx recognized the growing occult significance of the commodity in everyday life extending from the dancing table in the kitchen to the enormous edifice of capital surrounded by a cloud of charged, interlocked commodities. But what Marx could not fully grasp is how deeply implicated this new addition to the human ecosystem would become when commodity fetishization matured as a process. The person-hood of things and the thingness of persons have become inexorably tied up. This article traces the formation of the psychic world of a single commodity, a planchette within the history of a relationship and space; culminating in an exorcism and an individual set off like a broken toy.

Keywords

narrative autobiographical materials ethnography critical theory religion

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Planchette,My Love

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