Subjects and Objects
Session Leader
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Dr Christina Lupton, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Questions
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Under what conditions might people want to become more object-like?
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In what sense do objects or “Things” exceed the status of commodities as Marx defines it?
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How does circulation accentuate the similarities between subjects and objects and what are the symptoms of circulation increasing in the 1700s?
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In what particular ways do women participate in economies of circulation?
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Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Ch. 1, ‘Commodities”
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Arjun Appaduri, (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Chicago 1998), Introduction.
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Bruno Latour, “On Interobjectivity,” Mind, Culture, and Activity, Vol 3: No 4, 1996, 228-245.
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* “The Adventures of a Quire of Paper“ (1779) in British It Narratives, Vol 4. Mark Blackwell, (ed.) 23-40.
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* “The Adventures of a Black Coat” (1760) in British It Narratives, Vol 3. in British It Narratives, Vol 3 Christina Lupton, (ed.) (Pickering and Chatto, 2012), 111-152.
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* “The History and Adventures of a Lady’s Slippers and Shoes” (1754) in British It Narratives, Vol 3. Christina Lupton, (ed.) (Pickering and Chatto, 2012), 63-79.
Secondary Reading
- Mark Blackwell (ed), The Secret Lives of Things (Bucknell, 2007) particularly essay by Bonnie Blackwell.
- Lynn Festa, "Person, Animal, Thing: The 1796 Dog Tax and the Right to Superfluous Things" Eighteenth-Century Life 33.2, Spring 2009.
- Bill Brown, (Ed) Things (Chicago, 2005) Also available on line as edition of Critical Inquiry, Vol 28, No. 1, 2001.
- Bill Brown, "Object Relations in an Expanded Field," Differences (Fall 2006)
- Jonathan Lamb, The Things Things Say (Princeton, 2011), particularly chapter “Making Babies in the South Seas”