The Cultural Politics of Fur

Nowhere has the dispute over fur's meaning been more fervent than during the confrontations in the 1980s between animal rights activists and Native peoples of northern Canada, whose claims for self-determination include collective rights to engage in the selling and trading, consumption, and production of animal products. Using stories by Native peoples as well as other sources, Emberley traces the discourse from colonial fur-trading to the globalization of the fur industry in the twentieth century. The fetishization of fur, Emberley shows, has deep roots that can be seen in late nineteenth-century literary and psychoanalytical narratives of sexual fetishism and fur, such as Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's novel Venus in Furs, and in early modern paintings and etchings. She also looks at contemporary advertising, fashion photography, and films such as Paris Is Burning and Unzipped to uncover ongoing fetishistic practices and politics of the fashion world.