Cultures of Collecting

Roger Cardinal

• Editorial: Reaktion Books
• Año: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781861894212
• Categoría: Bildung
• Categoría: Bildung Allgemein

This book traces the psychology, history and theory of the compulsion to collect, focusing not just on the normative collections of the Western canon, but also on collections that reflect a fascination with the "Other" and the marginal – the ephemeral, exotic, or just plain curious.There are essays on the Neoclassical architect Sir John Soane, Sigmund Freud and Kurt Schwitters, one of the masters of collage. Others examine imperialist encounters with remote cultures – the consquitadors in America in the sixteenth century, and the British in the Pacific in the eighteenth – and the more recent collectors of popular culture, be they of Swatch watches, Elvis Presley memorabilia or of packaging and advertising.With essays by Jean Baudrillard, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Nicholas Thomas, Mieke Bal, John Forrester, John Windsor, Naomi Schor, Susan Stewart, Anthony Alan Shelton, John Elsner, Roger Cardinal and an interview with Robert Opie.

1
The System of Collecting
JEAN BAUDRILLARD

Among the various meanings of the French word objet, the Littré dictionary gives this: ‘Anything which is the cause or subject of a passion. Figuratively and most typically: the loved object’.

It ought to be obvious that the objects that occupy our daily lives are in fact the objects of a passion, that of personal possession, whose quotient of invested affect is in no way inferior to that of any other variety of human passion. Indeed, this everyday passion often outstrips all the others, and sometimes reigns supreme in the absence of any rival. What is characteristic of this passion is that it is tempered, diffuse, and regulative: we can only guess at its fundamental role in keeping the lives of the individual subject or of the collectivity on an even footing, and in supporting our very project of survival. In this respect, the objects in our lives, as distinct from the way we make use of them at a given moment, represent something much more, something profoundly related to subjectivity: for while the object is a resistant material body, it is also, simultaneously, a mental realm over which I hold sway, a thing whose meaning is governed by myself alone. It is all my own, the object of my passion.

THE OBJECT DIVESTED OF ITS FUNCTION

The fact that I make use of a refrigerator in order to freeze things, means that the refrigerator is defined in terms of a practical transaction: it is not an object so much as a freezing mechanism. In this sense, I cannot be said to possess it. Possession cannot apply to an implement, since the object I utilize always directs me back to the world. Rather it applies to that object once it is divested of its function and made relative to a subject. In this sense, all objects that are possessed submit to the same abstractive operation and participate in a mutual relationship in so far as they each refer back to the subject. They thereby constitute themselves as a system, on the basis of which the subject seeks to piece together his world, his personal microcosm.

Thus any given object can have two functions: it can be utilized, or it can be possessed. The first function has to do with the subject’s project of asserting practical control within the real world, the second with an enterprise of abstract mastery whereby the subject seeks to assert himself as an autonomous totality outside the world. The two functions are mutually exclusive. Ultimately, the strictly utilitarian object has a social status: think of a machine, for example. Conversely, the object pure and simple, divested of its function, abstracted from any practical context, takes on a strictly subjective status. Now its destiny is to be collected. Whereupon it ceases to be a carpet, a table, a compass, or a knick-knack, and instead turns into an ‘object’ or a ‘piece’. Typically, a collector will refer to ‘a lovely piece’, rather than a lovely carving. Once the object stops being defined by its function, its meaning is entirely up to the subject. The result is that all objects in a collection become equivalent, thanks to that process of passionate abstraction we call possession. Further, a single object can never be enough: invariably there will be a whole succession of objects, and, at the extreme, a total set marking the accomplishment of a mission. This is why the possession of an object of whatever kind is always both satisfying and frustrating: the notion of there being a set of objects to which it belongs lends the object an extension beyond itself and upsets its solitary status. Something similar can be said to operate in the sexual sphere: for if it is true that the amorous impulse is directed at the singularity of a given being, the impulse of physical possession, as such, can only be satisfied by a string of objects, or by the repetition of the same object, or by the superimposition of all objects of desire. A more or less complex pattern of connections and correlations is vital if the individual object is to achieve a degree of abstraction sufficient for it to be recuperated by the subject within that experience of embodied abstraction known as the sense of possession.

The product of this way of dealing with objects is, of course, the collection. Our everyday environment itself remains an ambiguous territory, for, in ordinary life, function is constantly superseded by the subjective factor, as acts of possession mingle with acts of usage, in a process that always falls short of total integration. On the other hand, the collection offers us a paradigm of perfection, for this is where the passionate enterprise of possession can achieve its ambitions, within a space where the everyday prose of the object-world modulates into poetry, to institute an unconscious and triumphant discourse.

THE LOVED OBJECT

‘The taste for collecting’, suggests Maurice Rheims, ‘is like a game played with utter passion’.¹ For the child, collecting represents the most rudimentary way to exercise control over the outer world: by laying things out, grouping them, handling them. The active phase of collecting seems to occur between the ages of seven and twelve, during the period of latency prior to puberty. With the onset of puberty, the collecting impulse tends to disappear, though occasionally it resurfaces after a very short interval. Later on, it is men in their forties who seem most prone to the passion. In short, a correlation with sexuality can generally be demonstrated, so that the activity of collecting may be seen as a powerful mechanism of compensation during critical phases in a person’s sexual development. Invariably it runs counter to active genital sexuality, though it should not be seen as a pure and simple substitute thereof, but rather a regression to the anal stage, manifested in such behaviour patterns as accumulation, ordering, aggressive retention and so forth. The practice of collecting is not equivalent to a sexual practice, in so far as it does not seek to still a desire (as does fetishism). None the less, it can bring about a reactive satisfaction that is every bit as intense. In which case, the object in question should undoubtedly be seen as a ‘loved object’. As Rheims observes, ‘The passion for an object leads to its being construed as God’s special handiwork: the collector of porcelain eggs will imagine that God never made a more beautiful nor rarer form, and that He created it purely for the delight of porcelain egg collectors…’.² Such enthusiasts will insist that they are ‘crazy about this object’, and without exception, even in circumstances where no fetishistic perversion is involved, they will maintain about their collection an aura of the clandestine, of confinement, secrecy and dissimulation, all of which give rise to the unmistakable impression of a guilty relationship. The boundless passion invested in the game is what lends this regressive behaviour its sublimity, and reinforces the opinion that an individual who is not some sort of collector can only be a cretin or hopelessly subhuman.³

Hence the collector partakes of the sublime not by virtue of the types of things he collects (for these will vary, according to his age, his profession, his social milieu), but by virtue of his fanaticism. This fanaticism is always identical, whether in the case of the rich man specializing in Persian miniatures, or of the pauper who hoards matchboxes. This being so, the distinction one might be tempted to make between the collector as connoisseur – one who adores objects because of their beguiling singularity and differentness – and the straightforward collector, whose passion is to fit his acquisitions into a set or series, breaks down. In either case, pleasure springs from the fact that possession relies, on the one hand, upon the absolute singularity of each item – which means that it is equivalent to a human being, and eventually the subject himself – and, on the other, upon the possibility of envisaging a set or series of like items, in which is implied a prospect of limitless substitution and play. The quintessence of the collection is qualitative, while its material organization is quantitative. For if possession entails a certain intimate delirium as one fondles and scrutinizes the privileged piece, it equally involves activities of seeking out, categorizing, gathering and disposing. Actually, there is a strong whiff of the harem about all this, in the sense that the whole charm of the harem lies in its being at once a series bounded by intimacy (with always a privileged final term) and an intimacy bounded by seriality.

Surrounded by the objects he possesses, the collector is pre-eminently the sultan of a secret seraglio. Ordinary human relationships, which are the site of the unique and the conflictual, never permit such a fusion of absolute singularity and indefinite seriality. This explains why ordinary relationships are such a continual source of anxiety: while the realm of objects, on the other hand, being the realm of successive and homologous terms, offers security. Of course it achieves this at the price of a piece of sleight-of-hand involving abstraction and regression, but who cares? As Rheims puts it, ‘for the collector, the object is a sort of docile dog which receives caresses and returns them in its own way; or rather, reflects them like a mirror constructed in such a way as to throw back images not of the real but of the desirable’.⁴

THE PERFECT PET

The image of the pet dog is exactly right, for pets are a category midway between persons and objects. Dogs, cats, birds, the tortoise or the canary…, the poignant devotion to such creatures points to a failure to establish normal human relationships and to the installation of a narcissistic territory – the home – wherein the subjectivity can fulfil itself without let or hindrance. Let us observe in passing that pets are never sexually distinct (indeed they are occasionally castrated for domestic purposes): although alive, they are as sexually neutral as any inert object. Indeed this is the price one has to pay if they are to be emotionally comforting, given that castration, real or symbolic, is what allows them to play, on their owner’s behalf, the role of regulating castration anxiety, a role that is also pre-eminently that of the objects which surround us. It can be said that the object is itself the perfect pet. It represents the one ‘being’ whose qualities extend my person rather than confine it. In their plurality, objects are the sole things in existence with which it is truly possible to co-exist, in so far as their differences do not set them at odds with one another, as is the case with living beings. Instead they incline obediently towards myself, to be smoothly inventorized within my consciousness. The object is that which allows itself to be simultaneously ‘personalized’ and catalogued. And there is never a hint of exclusivity about such subjective inventorizing: any thing can be possessed, invested in, or, in terms of collecting, arranged, sorted and classified. The object thus emerges as the ideal mirror: for the images it reflects succeed one another while never contradicting one another. Moreover, it is ideal in that it reflects images not of what is real, but only of what is desirable. In short, it is like a dog reduced to the single aspect of fidelity. I am able to gaze on it without its gazing back at me. This is why one invests in objects all that one finds impossible to invest in human relationships. This is why man so quickly seeks out the company of objects when he needs to recuperate. But we should not be fooled by such talk of recuperation, nor by all that sentimental literature that celebrates inanimate objects. We cannot but see this reflex of retreat as a regression; this sort of passion is an escapist one. No doubt objects do play a regulative role in everyday life, in so far as within them all kinds of neuroses are neutralized, all kinds of tensions and frustrated energies grounded and calmed. Indeed, this is what lends them their ‘spiritual’ quality; this is what entitles us to speak of them as ‘our very own’. Yet this is equally what turns them into the site of a tenacious myth, the ideal site of a neurotic equilibrium.

A SERIAL GAME

Of course, this recourse to objects looks superficial: how could consciousness be so easily fooled? But here is where subjectivity demonstrates its cleverness. The recourse to the possessed object is never superficial: it is always premissed on the object’s absolute singularity. Not in real terms: for while the appropriation of a ‘rare’ or ‘unique’ object is obviously the perfect culmination of the impulse to possess, it has to be recognized that one can never find absolute proof in the real world that a given object is indeed unique. On the other hand, subjectivity is entirely capable of working things to its advantage without such proof. It is true that one peculiarity of the object, its exchange value, is governed by cultural and social criteria. And yet its absolute singularity as an object depends entirely upon the fact that it is I who possess it – which, in turn, allows me to recognize myself in it as an absolutely singular being. This is of course a colossal tautology, yet it never fails to hasten the intensity with which we turn to objects, and the ridiculous facility with which they afford us a glorious, if illusory, gratification. (True, there will always be disappointment in store, given the tautological nature of the system.) But there is more: while the same sort of closed circuit can also be said to regulate human relationships (albeit with less facility), there are things inconceivable in the intersubjective encounter that become quite feasible here. The singular object never impedes the process of narcissistic projection, which ranges over an indefinite number of objects: on the contrary, it encourages such multiplication, thus associating itself with a mechanism whereby the image of the self is extended to the very limits of the collection. Here, indeed, lies the whole miracle of collecting. For it is invariably oneself that one collects.

We are now in a better position to appreciate the structure of the system of possession: a given collection is made up of a succession of terms, but the final term must always be the person of the collector. In reciprocal fashion, the person of the collector is only constituted as such by dint of substituting itself for every successive term in the collecting process. We shall see that there is, at the sociological level, an exact congruity of structure with the system of the series or the paradigmatic chain. For we shall find that the collection or the series is what underpins the possession of the object, which is to say, the reciprocal integration of object with person.⁵

FROM QUANTITY TO QUALITY: THE UNIQUE OBJECT

The weakness of this hypothesis might seem to be the decisiveness with which the passionate collector reaches out for a given piece. But it should be clear that the apparently unique object is, precisely, no more than the final term embodying all previous terms of a like kind, the paramount term of an entire set (whether virtual, invisible or implicit, is of no consequence). In short, the unique object epitomizes the set to which it belongs.

In one of those literary portraits in which La Bruyère demonstrates how curiosity can be the most extravagant of passions, we meet a collector of engravings who voices the complaint: ‘I suffer from an affliction I cannot ignore, and it will oblige me to give up collecting engravings for the rest of my days. I now possess the whole of Jacques Callot, apart from just one piece, which is, in truth, not even one of his better productions. On the contrary, it is one of his weakest, and yet it is the one I must have to round off Callot. For twenty years I have striven to lay my hands on that engraving, and now I’ve got to the point where I’ve given up all hope. It’s so cruel!’ Here we may discern, in strictly arithmetical terms, an equation between the entire set minus one item, and the single item missing from that set.⁶ This last, for lack of which the set at large remains meaningless, is a symbolic summation thereof: it is thereby imbued with a strange quality, the very quintessence, so to speak, of the entire preceding cavalcade of quantities. Certainly, as an object, it is perceived as unique, given its absolute position at the end of the series, which ensures its illusory air of embodying a special finality. This is not so remarkable, we might think; yet it is worth noting how quality is in fact activated by quantity, given that the value concentrated within this single signifier is one which spreads along the entire run of intermediary signifieds making up the paradigmatic chain. Here we find what might be called the symbolism of the object, in the etymological sense (symbolein) whereby a chain of significations is subsumed in a single one of its terms. The unique object is indeed a symbol, not of some external factor or quality, but essentially of the entire series of objects of which it constitutes the final term (while simultaneously being a symbol of the person who owns it).

La Bruyère’s example allows us to draw out another law, which is that an object only acquires its exceptional value by dint of being absent. It is not just a matter of the glamour of a mirage. What we have begun to suspect is that the collection is never really initiated in order to be completed. Might it not be that the missing item in the collection is in fact an indispensable and positive part of the whole, in so far as this lack is the basis of the subject’s ability to grasp himself in objective terms? Whereas the acquisition of the final item would in effect denote the death of the subject, the absence of this item still allows him the possibility of simulating his death by envisaging it in an object, thereby warding off its menace. This gap in the collection may be experienced as painful, but it is equally that rupture through which is signified a definitive elision of the real. We should therefore congratulate La Bruyère’s collector for not having tracked down his last Callot, since he would otherwise have ceased to be the living and passionate individual he still was! It could indeed be added that the point where a collection closes in on itself and ceases to be oriented towards an unfilled gap is the point where madness begins.

Another anecdote, relayed by Rheims, confirms this way of seeing things. A bibliophile with a magnificent collection of unique books learns one day that a bookseller in New York has placed on sale an item identical to one of the volumes he owns. He takes the plane, purchases the book, and then arrange...