L’objet de collection entre la mort de l’être et la naissance de la communauté
Date
2012-01-31
Authors
Gamache, Léa
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Abstract
This thesis examines how the concept and act of collection describes a relationship with the material world that clashes with Marxist traditions. Tracing how collected objects behave semiotically, this work defends the idea that one's relation to collected objects necessitates their complete possession in order to delimit the cycling of one's singularity, between "I" and the "Other;" and, at the level of community, the collected objects (e.g., in a museum) additionally show how we attempt to make an "oeuvre" of the world. This thesis demonstrates that the death of the collector exposes an irreconcilable disjunction between the object's meaning—which disappears with the arrival of the collector's death—and the object's shell, which is left as a witness or reminder of the incommensurability of human singularity and finitude. The museum is therefore understood as an attempt to overcome the limited realities of this objective shell, generating an infinite circulation of sense, or of a life that never quite ends.
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Keywords
Community, Collection, Object, Collector, Museum, Finitude, Death