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A Palimpsest Theory of Objects
Current Anthropology ( IF 3.226 ) Pub Date : 2022-04-20 , DOI: 10.1086/719851
Chip Colwell

For many years, scholars have sought to track and explain how objects come to have layered, contested, and evolving meanings over time. This article examines the potential contributions and limitations of a palimpsest theory of objects to help explain such meaning-making practices. A palimpsest is a tablet or parchment from which writing has been partially or completely erased to make space for another text. This proposed theory investigates in what ways objects are palimpsests (literally and metaphorically), able to concurrently contain multiple meanings as each new one is inscribed over past ones. Drawing from Peircean semiotics and current palimpsest theory, this article considers the meaning-making practices of Guanyin (the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion) statues as a case study. With Guanyin figurines, the processes of inscription and erasure can be systematically recorded in contexts of production and consumption by tracking the observed behaviors and expressed beliefs of different social actors and documenting the materiality of these objects as they move through physical and social spaces. The ethnography of things presented here both explores the processes that interweave meanings through Guanyin statues and tests the viability of an overarching palimpsest theory of objects.

中文翻译:

最简单的物体理论

多年来,学者们一直试图追踪和解释物体如何随着时间的推移而具有分层、有争议和不断演变的意义。这篇文章探讨了对象的最完整理论的潜在贡献和局限性,以帮助解释这种意义创造实践。palimpsest 是一块平板电脑或羊皮纸,其中的文字已被部分或完全擦除,以便为其他文本腾出空间。这一提议的理论研究了对象以何种方式是复写本(字面上和隐喻),能够同时包含多种含义,因为每个新含义都被铭刻在过去的含义之上。本文借鉴皮尔士符号学和当前的重写理论,以观世音(佛教慈悲菩萨)雕像的意义创造实践为案例研究。与观音像,通过跟踪观察到的不同社会行为者的行为和表达的信念,并记录这些物体在物理和社会空间中移动时的重要性,可以在生产和消费的背景下系统地记录铭刻和擦除的过程。这里呈现的事物民族志既探索了通过观音雕像交织意义的过程,也检验了一个总体性的最完整的对象理论的可行性。
更新日期:2022-04-20
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