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10010 Sigmund Freud'Outline ofPsychoana lysis.Stand ard Ed it ion.vol XXIIl, p 203.It cannot be discarded simply because it is unable in its currentformulation to deal with the single (fairly ubiquitous) facr ofdirect depiction of female genitals. Rather, its Freudian basis sho',ldbe re-examined.F E T ] 5 H : P E N 1 S 0 R P ,"I A LL US? According to the text ofFreud's essay 'f etishism', the construction of a fetish representsa disavowal of the pllysical fact of sexual difference, occasionedby an acrual glimpse of female genitals. The structure thatFreud describes is one in which the knowledge of the woman'slack of a penis is retained. but the infant is saved from acknowledgmentof it by th e substitution of what is seen in the momenrbefore the sight of the genitals for that sight itself. The desirethat the woman should after all have a penis is transferred to aparticular part of tbe body. or to an objecr (eg shoes. fur. stock·ings) or to other sensations. This substitute object maintains thebelief that the woman has a penis whilst the knowledge of thisphysical lack is also maintained : in clinical fetishists 'the two factspersist side by side throughout their lives without influencing eachother' lO The structure of disavowal is thi s: 'I know (woman hasno penis). nevertheless (she has, through this fetish),. In clinicalfetishism the sight of the fetish is a necessary aid to sexualarousal, and Freud states that he has only encountered this state,in males. Fetishism as a strucnlte of (usually visual) perceptionhowever, can also be found in women : it is a matter of the. fascinarionresulting from hesitation of the knowledge of sexual differenceby a structure of disavowal. 'I know, but nevertheless'. For Freud'saccount of fetishism rhen, the penis, its presence or absence on thehuman bod)', is central.Yet the presence or absence of a penis on a human body isonly important insofar as it signifies, insofar as it already hasmeaning y.-ithin a particular cultural formation of sexual difference.Tbe penis, or its lack. stands as the inadequate physical stand-infor that signifier which institutes the play of signification anddifference : the phallus. In effect, Freud's essay is aware of thisdistinction, only formulated clearly thirty years later. The child isalready aware of sexual difference in Freud's account: what heseeks is confirmation that this suspicion might not be true afterall. The desire that the woman should have a phallus in spite ofeverything is wbat gives the strengrh to the fetish, and allows thepromotion of the momenr before the physical confirmation as asubstitute. Fetishjsm as a ctisavowal of sexual difference is thusa disavowal of the phallus by promoting in its . place somethingelse that the woman does possess. As a disavowal, it neverthelessmaintains the phallus and thus the possibility of difference andlanguage,ll The structure is therefore one of 'I know that womandoes not have the phallus, nevertheless she does have the phallusin this fetish ',The feti sh is a signifier which stands in for the phallus. Freud'sexample of the 'shine on the nose' can demonstrate how thissubstirution of signifiers takes place through a process of me taphoror metonymy. His patient could become sexually 3rous-ed onlythrough the sight (real or supposed) of a shine on the nose of hispartneL Freud's analysis of this fetish has twO components : a storyand a sliding of signifiets. The 'little story' is that of rhe childseeing female genitals, and looking up at the woman's face to gaina reassuring 'nevertheless' from the nose. Hence the story ''''hichlies hidden in the fetish is one of a glance that traverses thewoman's body. The noti on of the 'shine' comes from the condensationof this 'glance' and its story into the German 'Glanz' or'shine'. Yet the condensation holds anodter possibility within itself,that the 'shine' could stand for a realisation of being looked at":the 'shine' is that of the gaze of the woman returned to theinquiring child. It then becomes the woman's look in which thefetish is located. rather than the 'shine upon the nose' that Freudindicates did not necessarily have [ 0 exist to othet observers. Thewoman's gaze is where her phanus js located. If this is so, thenthe story of the child's gaze rna)' well itself be a substitute forthis complex (nose/glance/Glanz) around the phallic gaze of thewoman. It would then be a substitute that is prO\rided in analysisin the form of a narrative ; and narrative is always a suspicious orinadequate form for satisfactory analysis because of its insistenceupon the serial nature of events (narrative can be said to Jie behindthe notorious 'stages' interpretation of Freud's explanations), andits tendency to invite us into a literal scenario (narrative fiction' sconstant lure).Such an interpretation of Freud's celebrated example questionsthe centrality of the child's active gaze to the account. The 'littlestory' of the child's horror at the woman's lack of a penis canlegitimately be seen as a substitute for the central and powerfulgaze which constructs the fetish . The way is ~en open to examinefetishism as a parricular kind of substitution of signifiers whichdoes not necessarily depend upon a 'primal look'. Indeed fetishismdoes not necessarily involve looking: a fetish can equally be somethingthat is felt, heard or smelled. Fetishism can be concernedwith any or all of the in\locatory drives and not just with a particu ­lar one: scopophilia.What seems to be neces8ary for a particular object to becomea fetish is that it sbould be constituted as a sexual significationby its articulation in a discourse of ·sexuality. The parts of thebody, the objects and rhe sensarions that us ually become fetish es_____ 101II Freud presents hisclinical fetishistsas in no real waydiscommoded :'usually they arcquJte satisfiedwith it, or evenpraise the way inwhich it casestheir eroti c Jife'SE "01 XXI, P 152.12 A brighr point oflight concenttatedon the eyes of anactor is a standardindicator of anintense gaze in afilm .