The Cultural Politics of Fur (Hardcover, illustrated edition)

In The Cultural Politics of Fur Julia Emberley explores the many interrelated -- and often competing -- cultural meanings of fur through its literary and popular representations and explains how fur has figured as a symbol of wealth and sexuality and a symptom of class, gender, and imperial antagonisms.

Nowhere has the dispute over fur's meaning been more fervent than during the confrontations the 1980s between animal rights activists and Native peoples of northern Canada, whose claims for self-determination include collective rights to engage 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 the twentieth century.

The fetishization of fur, Emberley shows, has deep roots that can be seen late nineteenth-century literature and psychoanalytical narratives of sexual fetishism and fur, such as Leopold yon Sacher-Masoch's novel Venus Furs, and 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.