A Few Steps Toward the Anthropology of the Iconoclastic Gesture

The paper -in part related to (67)- is an effort to get away from the conditioned reflex of the critical mode of thinking which highly values iconoclasm, anti-fetishim and anti-idolatry. Instead of another attempt at deconstruction it tries to reinstall the lost operation of « factishes” (that is fact+fetish). It is argued that by resinstating officially those factishes, the theory of action that is linked to construction —and deconctruction- can be replaced by a much more adjusted theory of mediations which provide the critical distance but not the anti-fetishism that usually goes with it.