Reading Racial Fetishism

Mercer’s “Reading Racial Fetishism; Mapplethorpe” seems to reflect Owen’s “The Discourses of Others,” in their topic of the Gramsci termed “War of Position.” Where Owens illuminates that there are opposing sides to particular works, Mercer gives us his own personal opposing opinions to many of his interpretations of Mapplethorpe’s work. Mercer also points out that the outcome of a reading or a chosen position is a ‘choice,’ and thus one can end up on either end of the spectrum. I like when he points out the war on position’s “outcome is never guaranteed in advance one way or another,” because it has become increasingly evident in the post-modern work we have analyzed in class, that the work as a whole is more about presenting different positions, and bringing to light certain societal themes/constructs/problem, etcetera, and allowing the viewer their choice on how to ‘take’ the work. Mercer makes it evident that the ‘choice’ is often dictated not only by the reader’s baggage, but by an overarching social theme that can dictate ‘who’ the reader is. Mapplethorpe’s images here do elicit many social issues among race and sexuality, including fetishism, eroticism, empowerment, disempowerment, and moreover, ‘postcolonial subjectivity.’ These themes reflected in Mapplethorpe’s work, which as Mercer points out, are routed in the democratic revolutions of the 1960’s, seem to say something about our societies advancement, for although many of the images can be read as ‘pornographic,’ or ‘pejorative,’ they stand in for our societies increased willingness to look at all sides of an issue.