yes i was fairly certain, actually, that the distinctions between tool+sign
were blurred; and thank you Eva for clarifying Mike's "artifactual" sense
of tools/signs -
money *is* interesting; particularly in the elitist context, where most
elites can switch to a cashless economy, while the poorer slip into
cash-dependent economies. the value of currency is relative to
who has more, obviously; but the notion of owning the cash,
paper, a coin jar, a dime or a ten-dollar bill,
as property of invariant value, valued in-itself - is partly, I think,
desiring what it can do (valued in its mediative function) but
also valuing the, or desiring what it represents (security)... security, safety,
more and more, I see these are controlling features of the elite class
concerns. Money, representing security - here the "thing" valued
is really a time concept, yes? the future. money secures the future, or the
possibility of being sheltered/fed/protected in the future - so
can this suggest that money represents time as
an artifact? probably not. but it's fun to try eh? ha ha -
>
>My initial definition of ownership is control. If I use something I don't
>necessarily need to control it. In the example of the child playing with a
>toy it would depend on his/her reaction when another child wanted to play
>with the same toy. I think to a certain extent ownership changes the
>relationship between tool and sign. It puts personal ownership into
>concepts I have interpreted as primarily cultural.
I think the minute any person "uses" something there is a relation of
control taking place. but controlling what? is it space, like imminent
spaces,
or is it the thing it-self - or is it controlling a sequence of events, or
a particular activity - I see control as a basic bio-process more related
to the limitations of
the system - familiarity is essential to survival, for humans anyhow -
predictive environments / anticipating outcomes - these are
manifestations of "control" -
how much control, I reckon, is about childhood experiences with
autonomy and security, preditive environments - e.g., children of alcoholic
parents tend to be much more controlling, much more possessive about
artifactual-ownership, boundaries, and so on....
but the degrees of control do not disuade from the moment of somehow
"entering" into some sort of relationship witrh the thing, and that moment
of identifying with the thing, or identifying something of/in/with the
thing - touching a smmoth stone on the beach and pocketing it, for
instance, as an example of spontaneously claiming something -
what happens there? what does it mean to keep stuff?
you write -
> I think to a certain extent ownership changes the
>>relationship between tool and sign. It puts personal ownership into
>>concepts I have interpreted as primarily cultural.
absolutely... but what *isn't* cultural?
At 11:36 AM 7/22/98, Eva Ekeblad wrote:
>At 11.08 -0700 98-07-21, diane celia hodges continued her exploration of
>"ownership as a performance of identification", reaching for something more
>than the easy Marxist way out of saying "it's all about capitalism".
<snip>
>And turning to the languages: the galaxy of means for mediating possessive
>relations... I should think it is quite dazzling and quite heterogeneous --
>just observing that what is "mine" can be a part of me, or something that
>I am a part of just as well as something that I have bought, inherited or
>been given. A characteristic, an affliction... what have you (what can I
>call mine?)...
*thanks* Eva, for your thoughts; this was all triggered years and years ago
when I read
a cross-cultrual study on langauges and the possessive - there is an place
where the people's language has only collective pronouns - "we" and "our"
as the dominant
pronouns, no singular possessive - these people collectively share
everything, so the concept of ownership is not implied in the possessive
'our" so much as
the collective presence is evoked in-relation to the speaker's
location.
this doesn't suggest that they don't "own" things, but that their ownership
is dispersed.
I wish I could place this info somehow in a text or with a name or something -
but I can't. It's a remote fragment I recall, is all...
>The psychology of all this I won't even mention... except for noting that
>the linking of the processes of ownership and identity sounds like a
>productive approach (for the appropriate purpose, of course).
thanks again - I think so; it's a way to ask "what's at stake?" regarding
possession,
ownership is quite intimate, I've found. What is interesting is the
relation between a person and a thing, in contexts of ownership, because
there is a kind of transference taking place, of self & object/artifact -
but here is where I am intrigued, with the passion especially that infuses
the relation of the person & the thing,
"mine!" as a boundary, an attempt to close the transaction of possibly
sharing, or giving up what one "has" - what does it mean to "have"
something in this way?
I can understand the psychic processes of object-relations,
abstractly, transference and identification as re-enactments of a primary
relationship; the organic need to connect with the world;
the thing-itself possibly does not matter as much as the
activity invoked in the moment of claiming - the kid with the daycare toy
is a good example because it is "ownership" through activity, not through
capitalist acquistion (what we pay for we own); but through the
familiarity, the predictive quality of the toy/context/time of day/ and so
on. Of course, another kid will come along eventually and want to play with
that toy,
and then the question of ownership emerges - (MINE!") -
mine. like the underground source of energy; mine, digging so deep into the
dark to startle a few pieces of mineral off the stone walls -
it is the "mine!" which intrigues me, the forcefulness, the absolute value
"mine" is given in Western culture.
something happens somewhere along the line of interacting with stuff
we bring into our imminent worlds, not always what we "buy" but
what we identify as valuable - these are usually what we identify with,
this transfer of selfworth into artifactual relations... curiouser and
curiouser.
thanks for tugging the threads here.
diane
"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