re-reading Vyg's notions of "tool" and "sign" and their distinctions
(language and artifacts?)
have brought me to this question of ownership; beccause if ownership is a
performance of identification,
then "owning" a tool suggests that the tool has taken on
significatory qualitities yes? that a tool becomes a sign
in the process of identification?
this again indicates that the activity which is between the
tool/sign/artifact and the process of assuming or claiming
"ownership" is important -
say, children who claim a toy in a daycare, because they have played with
it for the past three days. It is the routine, the predictive
relationship with the toy and the child that indicates a possessive relation,
perhaps?
It would be easy to situate this in Marixisms and say it's all
about capitalism,
but it is also about a transfer of some meaning in the relation
between oursevles & the things we interact with...
i used currency in my first question, the idea of money being property
as an example of how an artifcat is transformed within a
activity, from objective thing to subjective marker,
money as a tool
which is internalized as a sign.
in a sense, of course, yes. all tool/artifact-based activity can be
"internalized" -
is it the internalization which renders or transforms the tool
into a sign?
Because if the use or predictive relation of a
tool with an activity *is* the process which transforms
artifacts into subjective markers - then "artifacts" themselves
don't especially have meaning outside the relation.
still, if the possession is about identification, then ownership,
as a social activity, _is_ what describes the mediative activity, isn't it?
I mean, we don't own everything we use,
so what is the difference between using something and owning it?
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