What is given may be evaluated in relation to what might have been given but was not. The central thematic of this essay is what we term the shadow gift relation (as distinct from the more standard anthropological gift relation among exchange partner dyads) between the gift that is given and that which remains ungiven—with the latter, both present and not present, coming to haunt and unsettle the former. The potential of the gift is key for it is intimately related to critique: we explore how the relation between the virtual ungiven and what is actually given may come to form the basis of social criticism. This essay, then, defines a kind of ‘keeping while giving’ that is related to but different from that famously elaborated by Annette Weiner, for what is kept back, in the cases we discuss in this essay, are virtual (imagined) forms of gift. Giving is a technology of the imagination because it is a process that precipitates the imagination of a relation between an actual gift and a double that is virtual but nonetheless real because it exists in the form of a manifold of potentials for how the gift could be.

可以相对于可能已经给出但没有给出的东西来评估给出的东西。本文的中心主题是我们所说的赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与赠与，困扰着前者。礼物的潜力是关键，因为它与批评密切相关：我们探索虚拟未给予与实际给予的东西之间的关系如何形成社会批评的基础。然后，本文定义了一种与奉献者安妮特·韦纳（Annette Weiner）著名但又有所不同的“奉献”，因为在我们讨论的案例中，保留的是虚拟的（想象的）形式。礼品。