The Cultural Power of Personal Objects: Traditional Accounts and New Perspectives (Suny Series in American Philosophy and Cultural Thought)

The Cultural Power of Personal Objects seeks to understand the value and efficacy of objects, places, and times that take on cultural power and reverence to such a degree that they are treated (whether metaphorically or actually) as "persons," or as objects with "personality"—they are living objects. Featuring both historical and theoretical sections, the volume details examples of this practice, including the wampum of certain Native American tribes, the tsukumogami of Japan, the sacred keris knives of Java, the personality of seagoing ships, the ritual objects of Hinduism and Ancient Egypt, and more. The theoretical contributions aim to provide context for the existence and experience of personal objects, drawing from a variety of disciplines. Offering a variety of new philosophical perspectives on the theme, while grounding the discussion in a historical context, The Cultural Power of Personal Objects broadens and reinvigorates our understanding of cultural meaning and experience. Contents 6 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction 12 Part 1: Traditional Accounts 20 Chapter 1 Mereology: Wholes, Parts, and the Big Thicket 22 Posing a Problem 22 The Thicket: A First Look 23 Detour: Remarks on Mereology 24 Forests as Wholes 25 Some Philosophical Reflections 26 Kinds of Organisms 28 The Big Thicket: A Second Look 30 Concluding Quasi-Scientifical Conclusions 31 Notes 35 Bibliography 36 Chapter 2 Personality in Seagoing Ships 38 Some Personalizing Human Tendencies 41 Movement 41 Adjustment and Correction 42 Growth and Decay 42 Aging and Liability to Aging 43 Amenability to Multiplicity of Interpretation 45 From Human Person to Objective Personality 46 Personal Objects 47 The Sailing Ship as a Personal Object 49 Movement 50 Adjustment and Correction 51 Growth and Decay 52 Aging and Liability to Aging 53 Amenability to Multiplicity of Interpretation 56 Conclusion: or Why a Ship Is “She” 59 Notes 61 Bibliography 62 Chapter 3 Personified Objects and Objectified Persons in Ancient Egypt 64 Introduction 64 Statues of Gods and the Deceased as Manifestations of the Divine 66 Ka and Ba—Vehicles of Syncretism and Group Identity 67 KA 68 BA 69 Summary 69 Ancient Egyptian Temple Rituals 70 Mythic Precedents of the Daily Cult Ritual 71 Opening of the Mouth Ritual (wepet-ra) 72 Conclusion 76 Notes 77 Bibliography 82 Chapter 4 Seeing and Time: Personal Divinity in the Object of Hindu Devotion 86 The Argument 88 Darśan 89 Anticipations of Darśan 94 Preparation for Darśan 98 Prepared for Darśan 100 Notes 103 Bibliography 105 Chapter 5 Convergence and Divergence of Spirit: Tsukumogami and the Personality of Objects 106 Buddhism and the Path East 107 Kami and Tsukumogami 109 Notes 113 Bibliography 114 Chapter 6 The Journey of the Javanese Keris 116 Notes 126 Bibliography 128 Chapter 7 Cherokee Nonhuman Persons in Dual Realms 130 Notes 144 Bibliography 150 Chapter 8 The Quilt as Personal Object 154 Quilt as Visual-Historical Documentary 155 Efficiency and Beauty 157 The Story Quilt 160 Contemporary Activist Quilts 166 Conclusion 168 Notes 169 Bibliography 171 Part 2: New Perspectives 174 Chapter 9 The New Materialism: A Critique 176 Melquíades’s Magnets 177 Object Relations Theory 178 Being and Having 180 Container and Contained 181 Acting and Being Acted Upon 183 Closing Remarks 189 Notes 191 Bibliography 193 Chapter 10 Constituting Personal Objects, Constituting Persons 196 Introduction 196 Personalizing Things, Constituting Personal Objects 198 Personal Identities Personalizing One’s World 202 Notes 205 Bibliography 206 Chapter 11 A Personalized Cultural World: A Cassireran Phenomenology of Personalized Intuition 208 Personalized Space: Responsibility 211 Personalized Time: Hope 215 Personalized Number: Community 218 A Further Concrete Example of Personalized Intuition: Alice in Wonderland 221 Notes 226 Bibliography 229 Chapter 12 The Comfort of Things: Personal Objects, Possession, Dwelling, and the Desire to Be God in Sartre and Levinas 232 Sartre: Cartesian Freedom, the Desire to Be God, and the Awareness of Infinity 234 Cartesian Infinity in Levinas and the God “Who Comes to Mind” 237 Possession: Sartre and the Comfort of Things 241 The Desire to be God and Possession: The Dark Sense of Personing the World 242 Levinas: Dwelling, Possessions, and the Personing of Things 244 Notes 248 Bibliography 249 Chapter 13 Have We Effectively Made Money a Person and Ourselves Its Corporeal Embodiment? 252 Money 255 Money Forms 255 Money Functions 256 Commodity Theories of Money 257 Problems with Commodity Theories of Money 259 Credit Theories of Money 261 Personhood 262 Personhood as an Evolving Concept 263 Money and Personhood 266 Unpacking the Universality of Natural Rights 266 Unpacking Locke’s Labor Justification of Private Property 268 Credit-money and Radical Inequality 270 Conclusion 271 Notes 272 Bibliography 275 Chapter 14 Wampum, Person, and the Life of Exchange 278 Wampum 279 The Gift of Wampum 288 Collective Persons 291 Mythic Consciousness 292 Total Prestation 293 The Workings of Wampum 295 Waste Management 297 Exchanging Persons 299 Notes 302 Bibliography 310 Chapter 15 How My Piano Uses Gendlin’s Focusing Method 314 Notes 327 Bibliography 328 Chapter 16 Meditating on the Vitality of the Musical Object: A Spiritual Exercise Drawn from Richard Wagner’s Metaphysics of Music 330 Overture: The “Wagner Chord” for Our Reflection 330 Act 1: Wagner Finds a Book 333 Intermezzo: Musical Objects 335 Act 2: The Prophecy of Beethoven 335 Act 3: Music’s Magic 343 Notes 345 Bibliography 349 Chapter 17 Bring Out Your Dead: Human Bodies, Cultural Objects, and Personality 352 The People We Don’t Eat 353 Persons, Dignity, and Personality: People and Objects 356 Object-personality: Cultural Objects and Bodies 361 Animal Symbolicum and Cultural Objects 365 Notes 372 Bibliography 376 Chapter 18 Sex Robots and Solipsism: Towards a Culture of Empty Contact 378 Human-Robot Relations: Levy’s Reasoning 379 Shallowing the Self: Carr’s Concerns 382 The Problem of Other Minds 388 Notes 392 Bibliography 394 Contributors 396 Index 402 __The Cultural Power of Personal Objects____living____The Cultural Power of Personal Objects__