coagulation

friends, there is something about the title of the following documentary that is very 'radio 4' (and also the type of word play i find myself engaging in but which i nonetheless makes me cringe a little when i hear it on the radio). radio 4 is a little hit and miss for me (i used to listen to it frequently and first thing in the morning, but these days it annoys me), but do listen to selling cheese to the chinese.

i often avoid documentaries about china - often they feel a little too much as if they're trying to be 'on trend' and 'hip' by talking about the 'right' thing, but the very specific focus of this documentary appealed to me, especially in the context of thinking about table manners and eating habits as i have blogged about previously. i am also interested in the concept of what i suppose you could call a cultural colonialism (made possible by capitalism and globalisation), which the documentary's title hints at. rather more importantly, howevever, the piece itself also nuances this. the references to the cultural revolution and the impact on cultural inheritance is also quite interesting; it makes me feel a little less alone in what i feel to be my pseudo-rootlessness.



and then i suppose this leads me to personal element in my interest too, along with all the issues of cultural identity at play. because of the nature of my upbringing and because cultural practices are naturalised (so that we don't realise their status as such until something challenge this), i have always noticed the 'differences' between myself and others. in hong kong, i feel and am told that i much more westernised than is the standard. and over time, i have come to realise there here also, my experiences and cultural reference points are not the same. it is only in the past year or so (in conversation with my then-housemate) that i realised that my experience of cheese was 'unusual' compared to the average british person. as a child, my family only ever ate the american cheese slices (which my mum liked melted on toast) and laughing cow cream cheese* (which i often had on white bread). at one point in my childhood, i always used to order spaghetti bolognese when we ate out; in retrospect i suspect this has much to do with the powdered parmesan that came with the meal.

*her 'earrings' always bemused to me.

role reversal

d'arcy thompson's transformations
(it came up in a lecture on levi-strauss -- i think in discussion of mythologiques and the transformation of the myth being akin to evolution. namely, in that the structure remains the same but the relations within it change. i rather like the diagram, and it made me think a little about last year when i did work relating to adaptation in a non-scientific but hopefully holistic sense)
so, post-reading week and post-personal life madness (of the good yet busy-making variety), i have returned to being taught. i am coming to realise that my feelings towards my two main modules have swapped round:--

i am slowly coming to grips with 'subject and sign', although this may be in part because our most recent discussion has centred on application to film, making it much more accessible to persons such as myself who just don't think as well with the theory alone (if there is indeed such a thing). perhaps it is also because i have got more of the course under my belt. hopefully a little of the latter.

conversely, with 'material cultures', i'm coming to realise that despite its surface-level simplicity, i am not delving as deeply as i ought to. the difficulty with a course like this is that it interrogates everyday practices, which are quite difficult to separate one's self from. and, as i've mentioned before, it's quite easy for me to fall into the trap of assuming that i know what is being discussed, and assimilating the information, without really critically considering my own behaviour. to that end, i'm considering embarking on a little experiment. my tutor for this course keeps on suggesting we keep various journals - a 'boredom' journal for a week detailing what how we deal with boredom, for example. i'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to do something like this via twitter; make it a little more interesting (and potentially even have people participate? unlikely but a nice idea).

i'm slowly formulating essay topics for both, although i'm nowhere near set in my decision (as if i ever am!). once i get into the further reading, things will take shape, but i have a time-consuming tendency to want to read everything and then realising i can't before i even get to the maybe-i'll-start-writing stage. it seems everything i do i do slowly, and yet i feel frantic. such is masters life, i suppose.

&

on the digitisation of our age, i have recently had two interesting experiences - both took place on the same day, and both relating to authority -- the authority of the material, but also authority's use of material (or lack thereof):

i sat the GRE last friday. exams in and of themselves are rather nervewracking experiences, but because this was computerised, the process leading up to it was very daunting. you register once you arrive, rewriting by hand (perhaps the most material process involved here!) a statement saying you won't disclose the contents of the test to anyone else, and then are told to sit in a rather faceless room, not knowing where you're going to be led to next. i understand that these people this everyday, but a little guidance wouldn't have gone amiss to aid the ease of the examination process. you take the exam by computer in a cubicle, so that you can't see others who are in the midst of test-taking - the benefit of the computer test being that people can start the exam at different times, cancelling out the need for an invigilator who gives preliminary instructions, telling you what you can and cannot do. instead, it's all there before you in the screen. this obviously reduces the human element involved significantly, and the human interaction you do have, as i have recounted, is very impersonal. all this adds to the intimidation of the exam set-up, and the impersonality of taking the test on a computer.

and at the end of the exam, you can designate four institutions you wish to send your scores to, and one (or at least i) can't help having the feeling that this method feels somewhat unreliable. thoughts like did i pick the right school? there were 3 listings for the same university ran through my mind afterwards, because this set-up was unfamiliar to me and there was no human face to guide me, merely the suspect technology itself. in other words, i couldn't help but want some sort of piece of paper at the end of it, to confirm my choices, or even to have specified these choices by writing them out in a form. somehow to do so would've made the process seem more reliable.

common sense dictates that i should've asked an invigilator to confirm that i did what i was meant to do correctly, but the atmosphere intimidated me into not doing so. i wonder (to again draw upon and possibly mis-appropriate the idea for which he is most well-known) what foucault would have made of the whole thing -- the exam room i was in was one of two, and the exam invigilator's room (with its windows looking into each exam room) was between them. it reminded me very much of the watchman's tower. and, where i sat, if i looked up, i could see a surveillance camera (since the window of the 'watchtower' only allows the invigilators to see if an examinee has raised their hand or left their cubicle, the camera allows them to see what the examinees are doing at said cubicles). but the more typical type of camera - it was the kind which is obscured by a one-way mirror, in the shape of a section of a sphere. and because of its reflective qualities, when i looked at (and into) the camera, all i could see what the the camera would see: myself.

the other example relates to the police. after my test, i met with a friend, and unfortunately, an incident occurred that necessitated a visit to the local police station, so that we could report a crime. when we arrived, there were several other people waiting sat on the benches opposite the area where you could speak to the police officer, which separated from the waiting area by a glass door, so we could see the proceedings going on inside, and they could see us. affixed to the glass door was a sign which instructed us to take a seat and wait to be called forward. we did so. interestingly, the 'queue' to see the policeman at the desk was only determined by decorum -- no . but then this is britain, and queuing decorum reigns supreme. (i wonder if there has any work been done on this too!). or perhaps they were relying ultimately on the policeman's authority - we were to wait to be called forward (although in reality the man at the desk let decorum take its course - in fact, one city-type/businessman let younger dude go first, since he knew that he was going to be a while, but the dude wasn't going to be long). as i sat, reading the various signs, i realised that we could report our crime to the what is referred to as the 'police information point' (or PIP as it will hereafter be known. ah, great expectations... it's actually rather fitting - and possibly even intentional? - that it abbreviates into a name of sorts, given that its innocuous name and appearance is intended to create an aura of approachableness. this was made apparent to me by my friend astute observation that it was 'calling for attention' or some similar personification). in addition to theft (which was what we were there to report), posters helpfully also informed us that we could amongst other things, we could also report hate crimes to PIP (or, alternatively, online). now, i don't know about you, but there seems something a little bit wrong about such an impersonal method of crime-reporting given the personal nature of the crime.

now, i understand the logic of 'efficiency' that underlies this self-reporting of crimes, and in the case of a hate crime, a victim or witness may even find the anonymity of the internet to be a benefit. nevertheless, there is another issue involved here - the authority of the material (and also the 'personal', as opposed to the digital). we opted to go to a police station (despite being aware of the internet reporting option) because it somehow seemed more valid, more authoritative than sending the details of a crime through broadband cables.

anyway, my friend initially refrained from using PIP but i was both bemused and curious as to how reporting a crime to it worked, and so i started the process to see what PIP would ask a person to do. the queue was long, however, and so suzanne opted to try PIP out. i assured her that we would probably be given some sort of confirmation slip - serving as an authorative material object, since PIP seemed to have a slot from where we could collect such a slip from. after the tedious process of reporting the crime to PIP, the option to print off the reference number came up. we instructed PIP to print accordingly and, ultimately (perhaps aptly for the purposes of my story), everything but the relevant information was printed off. by this point, the businessman was speaking to the policeman (notably i overheard him saying he lost not his phone but his iphone -- more on such distinctions later, maybe) and no one else was waiting, so we figured we might as well get him to double-check that it's gone through. the rest of suzanne's saga is irrelevant in this context, but the fact is that we do not always trust technology, being aware of its flaws. and so we place belief in what we do know - the material. (and people too, i suppose).

and, for me, in many ways, it is difficult to imagine a world in which this distrust doesn't exist. it is difficult to imagine a world where the material is largely irrelevant. but as technology perfects itself, and as people become more accustomed to using it in ways that currently seem foreign, and even threatening, to us, the world as we know it probably won't exist. and in its place will be one which people may now describe as a world where the machines have 'taken over' (this loss of autonomy/control to technology obviously being a source of anxiety not only of our times, but of many of those before us). and yet, as n katherine hayles noted in the conclusion of a talk she recently gave at nottingham, we're already at this point where the machines have taken over. our phones, computers, the internet -- they all have mechanics we don't understand, do things which we don't understand and unbeknownst to us, which nevertheless affect us. all that we experience is what it presents to us, and this is why the concept of technological 'functionality' exists at all - it refers to the effectiveness of a machine in allowing us, as humans, to use it.

oh, an aside: the above image was one of the many posters i inspected whilst waiting to see a police officer. i first encountered one of these set in a similar setting - at night, at a bus stop, so the entire ad was lit up. it was rather intimidating and disturbing, partly for reasons succinctly summed up here,

You may have seen the slogan “Keep Calm And Carry On” on posters and t-shirts recently. It’s a poster design from the archives of World War II, when invasion of these islands was expected. It’s now the direct inspiration for this new police campaign. The original has grown in popularity because it’s a quaint relic of a bygone era which has seen its message of stoic British resolve reapplied now. It’s all very tongue in cheek. By using this format, the Home Office may be seeking to be trendy – but they just end up co-opting aspects of what the message meant then and means now. The original was simply a propaganda poster. Draw your own conclusion from that.

on practicing (and perfection?)

at the bottom of the sidebar is my blogger profile, in which i state that i am a messy eater. and i am. an ex once pointed out that although i know many of the rules and conventions of table manners, i simply choose to ignore them. to a large extent, this is true. who needs to look delicate when food tastes good?

this conception of myself, however, has recently been challenged by the latest week of seminars in 'material cultures and everyday life'. this week, we discussed cultural practices relating to food. one of the required readings was the section on table manners in norbert elias' the civilizing process. and at first, i began the reading thinking of myself as almost above/detached from this world - ah, look at those thirteen-century people of the court and their aversion to the bestial and animal in relation to food! (bad manners are likened to the actions of slovenly pigs, for example). of course, however, i am part of this continuum which develops from this into things as they are today. and when i consider my attitudes more carefully (thinking specifically of how an acquaintance's eating habits used to bother me, for example), i realise that i am as much a part of this tradition -- as my lecturer noted, she finds the thirteenth-century source material amusing sometimes, and the only reason this is so is that we have all naturalised such views. this is a point that elias himself makes, but it is easy to dismiss one's self as being 'detached' from this if one does not consider things fully. it is easy mistake to make perhaps, but this is does not excuse the fact that it is in a sense bad practice.

in this particular case, my position is complicated by my background. the book discusses how when eating meat, we tend to try and distance the meat on the plate from the idea of the animal, form the idea that it came from an animal. having grown up in hong kong, where the heads of animals are served with the dish in order to prove 'freshness', and having witnessed visiting british friends' aversion to this (and the fact that in the cuisine in which i was brought up, eating off the bone and spitting the bone out), i felt myself as separate from certain anxieties relating this. but in the civilizing process, in a section knives and knife-use, elias notes that in chinese culture, the knife (which is integral in this process of literally deconstructing the animal into the cut of meat we eat) is never present at the table. the act of cutting up is absent from the table; it is confined solely to the kitchen. perhaps then, these anxieties are manifest in different ways, despite the fact that there are some anxieties in common.

i realise too that my thinking of myself as 'above' this has to do with my evaluation of my omnivorism. there is an interesting discourse surrounding the justification of eating meat relating to hypocrisy. in other words, 'it is ok that i eat meat because i can bare the fact that this meat comes from animals - i can accept it'. but truthfully, i can't say if i would be able to kill an animal to eat (although i think i would be ok with the preparation of it) - i don't think i will ever know unless i actually try - and my line of thought as i explained above is in some related to this discourse of meat-eating hypocrisy. (as a side note, i would like to read the sexual politics of meat. there is so much to read though! i am barely managing my required reading, let alone anything extra. hopefully reading week and the holidays will give me time enough to catch up -- otherwise this blog is in danger of becoming merely a collection of books i intend to pursue!)

on a different note, there is an interesting facet of the notion of the naturalisation of certain modes of behaviour relating to class. in elias' analysis, manners 'spread' throughout a society because upper classes adopted htem first, and lower classes sought to emulate them (which in turn made the upper classes complicate - or even reverse - existing definitons of what was acceptable and encouraged). but these manners, because they are supposedly 'natural', are never spoken of -- they are simply something you are supposed to know. and thus those who do, have social 'grace'; they are thought of positively by society, and those who do not, are not. i wonder to what extent this can be applied to other aspects of our social lives, and what this says. there are certainly people we all know who are socially 'graceful', who are easily likeable -- what does this say about them? i find this more difficult to think about and wrap my head around, perhaps because this thinking is more 'engrained' within me, and as someone who grew up shy and awkward, i was (told to be) envious of those who were not.

&
another perhaps related mistake i have beeen making in my approach to my studies is relating ot mastery. despite being warned against this urge i do have within me the impulse to 'master' things, as i think i have highlighted before. and this is precisely almost the exact opposite of what my course is about and also opposed to what i myself think. in a sense, this conflict within me is what motivates me. and i think this conflict is what motivates a lot of academic work, or at least, that's how it seems to me. to give another example, much of what i have written in the past relates to concepts of 'high' and 'mass/popular' culture (the implication of the word high, however, being that the other is 'low'). i think there is great value to be had in the popular culture, which is also derided. and yet i can also be quite snobbish in my tastes. how can i reconcile the two?

anyway, mastery. it is partly why i have included "(and perfection?)" in this blog title's post, because i suppose a mastery of knowledge implies a perfection of a person's knowledge. what in part appeals to me about this course is it is a way into key thinkers of whom i have heard so much about, but about whom i know so little. in particular, the tradition of critique lecture series is useful in that it gives an introduction to many of them. and in a sense, my desire to know. and in learning about figures such as marx and freud, i have been able to get to grips a little better as to what they were actually about (as opposed to what they are about in other people's interpretations and in the popular imagination). but i still don't feel like i understand or know much about them. in this respect, lacan has been rather helpful, although (or perhaps because?) i don't feel i understand him beyond this vague sense or shape in my mind. in seminar XX, he begins his lecture on 'God and the Woman's jouissance', he says to his audience,

reading in no way obliges you to understand. You have to read first.

this was of some comfort to me, but unfortunately i only came across it after struggling with all the other lacan required readings!

of some comfort too, was freud. but his work was also equal amounts of despair - reading his work on melancholy made me rather sad. i suppose because a lot of what is said rings true, and yet there seems to be no way around that. i seem to have been very much affected by what i've read lately, sometimes in adverse, unintentional or surprising ways. the class we spent discussing table manners led me to be even more 'conventional' in my manners, as my disproportionate squeamish about hair in a slice of cake illustrated. the discussion of 'a dialectical relationship between the desire for an ever-present intimate or personal connectivity and the impoverishment of the social and geographical environment in which it occurs' in the little i read of michael bull's sound moves: ipod culture and urban experience only made me more away of how my own practices recreate this dialectic, and in turn only made me feel a little lonely. it also made me wonder whether this dialectic has even determined the nature of my romantic relationships to some extent. and so on that note, i shall leave you with this:



disclaimer: much/most of this was written weeks ago, but i never got around to posting. so whilst it still applies, it isn't as explicitly on my mind. i have more to say about life of late, but perhaps that those thoughts too need time to stew, digest, and germinate.

the first of many: time to face the theory

i the photo on the left as featuring of the trent building clock tower (which you can also see in the photo below), but i am unsure as to account for the other buildings. i suspect if it is indeed the clock tower, that i did not expose the film twice, but multiple times, and in addition to nottingham, these photos may also feature cheltenham and london.
so, here we are. i am a week (in as much as i have had my week's lectures/classes by wednesday) into my course. i would be lying if i did not say that i am more than a little overwhelmed by all the reading i have to / would like to do for this course. i am determined to make as much of it as i can, having finally come (perhaps too late?) to an academic epiphany of sorts towards the end of my final year.

this semester i am taking modules entitled "material cultures and every day life" and "subject and sign after freud and saussure", but as part of my MA am also required to attend a lecture series 'tradition of critique'.

'material cultures' looks set to be exactly the sort of thing i am interested in doing. we have been encouraged to keep a journal/blog of sorts in an attempt to document are daily experience and interactions with material cultures and every day life. on this subject i don't have much to say today, but i think following what i have mentioned previously*, i'd be interested in writing on how laptop/computer use affects the cultural practise of watching dvds or films.

in spite of the fact that the cultural studies aspect of my course will be what most ostensibly overlaps with my academic practise, my masters is also in critical theory. my encounters with it thus far have been limited to literary theory and 'american thought & culture'. my gaps of knowledge and skills in this area are wide and in need of being filled. even if, in the hopefully unlikely event, that it transpires i don't enjoy it much, i will be glad for having done so.

it is quite overwhelming at the moment, partiuclarly in relation to the lecture series. the first lecture was on kant, who i feel i only have the most cursory of understandings of right now. this is frustrating. i am tempted to think that because the lecture series serves an introduction to key thinkers and , it does not have as explicit focus. and perhaps in this sense, i am falling into the trap of wanting to 'master' such things - to want to know everything and then be done with it - through despite the fact that i know i cannot truly do so, points that two of my tutors have made eloquently apparent. (upon successful completion of this degree, however, i will technically be a master of critical theory and cultural studies!). and indeed as i as prepare for the next lecture (hello hegel), things are seeming to come together a bit better, and the overall intention of the series is more apparent ( - the tradition of critique!).

the 'subject and sign' seminar, i am sorry to say, did not receive as much attention from me as it deserved this week due to, well, external factors. i have commented to others, perhaps rather rashly, that i found it not so exciting and expect it shall do as time progresses and we move beyond the 'establishing' thinkers. true this may be to some small extent, having thought on the seminar discussion a little more after, i think this is not entirely the case.

like 'material cultures and everyday life', 'subject and sign' is a compulsory module. but as i am not taking straight cultural theory, this is to the exclusion of 'social and political theories'. i would love to become better versed on that subject too, but 'subject and sign' seemed more relevant to my interests overall. hopefully, though, i will manage to improve myself in this arena too over time.

i apologise if this has been horribly dull for any readers who have made it this far, but this reflection upon the first week has been useful for me to make sense of things. i am still settling into it, and there is so much that i must and want to do that it is difficult to keep on top of it all. hopefully as i get to grips with things more i can soon post on something more meaty. in the mean time, let me direct the unintiated to a wholly interesting discussion about tarantino's inglourious basterds here. and on a final and unrelated note, i am listening to this trio a lot lately. and so should you.

*but also incompletely. those references - while relevant - aren't the most interesting part of hutcheon's book relating to this topic. i shall have to look it up again later.

a collection of recollections on collecting

from a lovely blog called books at home

i have recently acquired travels in hyperreality (finally!) and and our faces, my heart, brief as photos through gloucestershire county council. perhaps it has bee the anticipation, but finally having these books in my possession has been a great source of joy for me, despite the fact that i know i must return them. reading from a book is obviously a very physical thing, and one can literally 'sense' the book in multiple ways. for me, there is always feeling of a 'bond' with a specific physical book after reading it. i wonder how this relates to the desire to own, because this bond can exist perfectly well without my having to actually own a book, but then it is predominatly manifest through ownership, as proved by the disputes between my older sister and i about what book belongs to whom.

&

after the summer lull, i am now going to begin my MA in critical theory and cultural studies. i'm both excited and daunted by the prospect. i suspect that the course will increase my bloglust as i'll need somewhere to think things out. we'll see.




jg ballard as featured in writers rooms from here. a nice selection of writer's rooms here
given my current circumstances, i was directed to walter benjamin's "unpacking my library: a talk about collecting". i have in the past expressed frustration over the desire to own things and my attachment to said stuff. amongst many other things, i think benjamin articulates and explains this rather well:

naturally, his existence is tied to many other things as well: to a very mysterious relationship with ownership (something about which we shall have more to say later); also, to a relationship to objects which does not emphasize their functional, utilitarian value - that is, their usefulness - but studies and loves them as the scene, the stage of their fate.

this is undoubtedly an an oft-blogged about piece (for when others are in similar circumstances), and in my googling endeavours to track it down, i came across a choice few, which, dear reader, i shall share with you:

unpacking my record collection by julian dibbell (who seems like someone i should have known about already) is reflection on music 'collecting' in mp3 form:

But if unpacking my CD collection has drained it of some kinds of intimacy, I can't help feeling it has also infused it with others. Sitting before my computer, gazing at the lists of songs on my screen, I feel closer to my music than I ever have before. I point, I click, I hear. I can know these records now as I have never known them, moving from song to song with an immediacy no user interface from the Victrola to the CD carrousel has yet afforded. I can chase associations and similarities that might have remained hidden or only guessed at while my songs still lived in plastic, on the shelves. Stripped of its physical shell, my music collection lies naked before me, more available to my touch, in some ways, than it was when I could actually touch it.

And if I am now on more intimate terms with my collection, then I am also more intimate -- thanks, above all, to Napster -- with my fellow collectors. And not to sound weird or anything, but I do mean intimate. Maybe it's just me, but I suspect that most people who have ever opened their personal computers to live, incoming connections from anywhere on the Internet -- as Napster requires users to do -- have felt an almost sexual frisson at their sudden connectedness and vulnerability to the wired population of the world. Add to this the fact that Napster is a network essentially saturated with raw, undiluted music lust (enhanced, thanks to copyright law, by the perennial turn-on of the illicit), and you are left to conclude that record collecting has become a sexy pursuit indeed. The traditional eros of collecting has been perverted, connecting the collector not just to objects but, of all things, to other people.

it is really a rather good read, and i advise you enjoy it in its entirety, despite my posting a large chunk here. i like very much how dibbell ruminates on the benefits of technology in the world of collecting, and just collecting in general, and also the suggestion that collecting is perverted by virtue no longer being (socially) 'perverse'. this doesn't mean, however, that it loses some the positive aspects of said perversity (something to which i've referred to before).

in discussing his mp3 collection, dibbell also charts how he lost interest in his record collection - his physical one. the same, perhaps, can be said of kazys varnelis,

But this was only a ruse. I had decided long ago that it was time to rid myself of these things. Moving from Los Angeles only confirmed my feelings. After the movers had gone, I looked at my apartment and thought about the shelves that once lined them, stuffed full with books.

"The modernists had it right all along," I said to myself, "but damn them. They wrote too many books." I resolved to do something about this.

With three of my own books published last fall, my pace slowed from frantic to manic and I had some time in the evenings to unpack my library, but not to lovingly put it back on the shelves as Benjamin did. Instead, I would sell it off mercilessly.

to be honest, what collector does not consider cutting ties with all that they have amassed? (or for that matter, what person does not consider that at some point in their life? certainly not a collector, i'll vouch). varnelis seems to be doing so successfully, but i'm not sure if that necessarily makes him any less of a collector. perhaps i am romanticing too much about what it means to be a collector, bug again, i can't imagine being someone who collects things and not having a tendency to romanticise. while i don't doubt it is wholly possible to live an ascetic lifestyle, the decision to give up something is often said to demonstrate just how much said thing has a hold on you. varnelis too muses on the role of technology, ending his post thus:

The global continuum of information and product flow that we live in means anything is available to anyone at any time. When that is possible, the need for permanent ownership ceases. Does life become a constant field of variation, our possessions an endlessly reconfigurable but minimal set of objects?

unpacking walter benjamin, ryan trauman gets at various issues brought to light by benjamin very concisely. his approach to the issue of technology is this:

But the thing is, lots of these notions are in need of deconstruction within the context of the digital age. Books are going digital, and that slow transition (yes, it will be slow) has all sorts of cultural impacts. At the forefront of these shifts in perception is that “digital” books are “virtual” books. While the distinction might not seem important initially, when “virtual” is commonly juxtaposed with “material,” the implications for the future of books are potentially enormous. If digital books are non-material, will they lose their capacity to do the work they’ve always done?

Don’t fret. We can fix this. I’ve got a plan. But there’s a lot more I need to learn. And I’m gonna start with Mathew G. Kirschenbaum’s book Mechanism. His argument? “Digital” is very, very “material.”

this solves, to some extent, the issues arising from the dibbell article, and all of the posts touch upon the notion of technology. another issue that trauman takes from benjamin is how the context a collection provides informs understanding of a person, a little like what i discussed with regards to facebook previously:

A book, in and of itself, establishes little about the person who owns it. ... But it’s not merely the book’s presence on the shelf that establishes this semiotic value. Instead, it’s the assumption that the library’s owner has found the book worthy of investment. In one sense, this construction of collector’s value is recursive. Ownership and a place in one’s collection confers value on the book, while book itself becomes a materially constructs some element of the owner’s identity.

the notion of books in the context of a collection is also the beginning of a piece written by bhabha (someone who i have also encountered only in a cursory manner via introductory lectures), which i am going to try and find in full.