owning artifacts

diane celia hodges (dchodges who-is-at interchg.ubc.ca)
Sun, 19 Jul 1998 12:49:20 -0700

recently I've been confronted with a significant appearance of
value and ownership - specifically the notion that money = currency; money
itself can be "owned" as property; money = property.

this list makes reference ot artifacts often. from my understanding
there is a relation between ownership and identification,
that the perspective of possession, or more grammatically, the possessive,
is also an expression of identification -

identification here, as a desire to subjectify, or a need to internalize
perceived
interpretations of a thing - nostalgia, as an example, being an historical
identification, a way of preserving a distant/imagined self,

within an artifact - an old photo, a scrapbook, a curio, a chewed-up pen lid,
a penny - nostaligic value, as an example of identification through artifacts.

so. my question is more about owning money,
and the desired accumulation of currency as a value in-itself -

what is preserved in this relation with money? what of the self is
endorsed in this relation with currency?
is currency an artifact - \? it seems to me that artifacts are understood
in their mediative relations, not as things-in-themselves, but as what
mediate
activity - what activity lies between this

belief about owning money, or valuing money as property?

diane, muddled yet but give me time.

"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right." Ani Difranco
*********************************************
diane celia hodges
faculty of education, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction,
university of british columbia
vancouver, bc canada

snailmail: 3519 Hull Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada V5N 4R8