Spiritual Fetishism: From Commodity Form to Algorithmic Affects
Building on Marx’s foundational insight that the commodity mediates social relations, we witness an advanced stage of commodification wherein spiritual and affective dimensions—traditionally posited as transcendent or non-economic—become fully assimilated into late capitalism’s circuits of exchange. This process extends Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism: not only do objects become animated by social relations, but experiences of “spiritual fulfillment” (meditation apps, wellness retreats, mindfulness products) are also rendered into discrete, purchasable units. In psychoanalytic terms, this shift recasts spiritual longing as a surplus affect, a new fetish-object promising existential resolution without challenging the fundamentals of capital’s exploitative logic. The consumer thus “buys” tranquility, authenticity, and transcendence in the same manner one might purchase a luxury commodity. As Sadie Plant suggests in Zeros + Ones, immaterial forms of labor and desire, often feminized or marginalized, are reterritorialized and commodified in digital culture, further underscoring how ephemeral, affective, and bodily processes become exploitable resources.
Slavoj Žižek conceptualizes ideology as an unconscious fantasy structure that sustains our reality through disavowal: “I know very well, but still…” Applied here, “spiritual fetishism” allows subjects to engage in consumerism under the pretense of moral or spiritual elevation. The ethic of personal “mindfulness” can thus become a mechanism of system-wide mystification, displacing systemic critiques onto the individual’s quest for inner peace. In short, the fetish conceals the autoimmune dimension of capital’s expansion—obscuring the contradictions that repeatedly generate crises, and rebranding them as personal failings remediable by commodified introspection or self-help.