My Life with Things

Chin Elizabeth Chin

Description

Unconventional and provocative, My Life with Things is Elizabeth Chin's meditation on her relationship with consumer goods and a critical statement on the politics and method of anthropology. Chin centers the book on diary entries that focus on everyday items-kitchen cabinet knobs, shoes, a piano-and uses them to intimately examine the ways consumption resonates with personal and social meaning: from writing love haikus about her favorite nail polish and discussing the racial implications of her tooth cap, to revealing how she used shopping to cope with a miscarriage and contemplating how her young daughter came to think that she needed Lunesta. Throughout, Chin keeps Karl Marx and his family's relationship to their possessions in mind, drawing parallels between Marx's napkins, the production of late nineteenth-century table linens, and Chin's own vintage linen collection. Unflinchingly and refreshingly honest, Chin unlocks the complexities of her attachments to, reliance on, and complicated relationships with her things. In so doing, she prompts readers to reconsider their own consumption, as well as their assumptions about the possibilities for creative scholarship.

Sujets

• Consumerism

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 19 mai 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822374268
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

M Y L I F E W I T H T H I N G S

M M Y Y L L I I F F E E W W I I T T H H T T H H I I N N G G S S T H E C O N S U M E R D I A - The Consumer Diaries E L I Z A B E T H C H I N R I E S D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S Durham and London 2 016 E L I Z A B E T H C H I N

Duke University Press Durham and London 2016

• © 2 0 1 6 D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S • A L L R I G H T S R E S E R V E D P R I N T E D

I N T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S O F A M E R I C A

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Contents

● Acknowledgmentsvii ● 1. Introduction3 ● 2. The Entries37 ○ My Life with Things37 ○ Learn to Love Stuf38 ○ Banky40 ○ A Digression on the Topic of the Transitional Object42 ○ Cebebrate!56 ○ My Purple Shoes58 ○ Newspapers61 ○ Rose Nails63 ○ The Window Shade67 ○ Napkins69 ○ My White Man’s Tooth72 ○ Should I Be Straighter76 ○ Cyberfucked79 ○ Knobs80 ○ Glasses82 ○ Curing Rug Lust85 ○ Window Shopping Online89 ○ Catalogs92 ○ Other People’s Labor95 ○ Routes/ Making Making Roots 98 ○ My Closet(s)101

○ Joining the MRE108 ○ Fun Shopping114 ○ Preschool Birthday Parties114 ○ Xena Warrior Consumer Princess118 ○ I Love Your Nail Polish120 ○ Little Benches123 ○ The Kiss126 ○ Are There Malls in Haiti?127 ○ Baby Number Two Turned Me into Economic Man129 ○ Pictures of the Rice Grain132 ○ Panting in Ikea136 ○ Capitalism Makes Me Sick139 ○ My Grandmother’s Rings147 ○ Anorectic Energy157 ○ Mi-Mi’s Piano162 ○ Dream-Filled Prescription168 ○ The Turquoise Arrowhead170 ○ Turning the Tables173 ○ Minnie Mouse Earring Holder176 ○ Make Yourself a Beloved Person181 ● 3. Writing as Practice and Process187 ● 4. This Never Happened203 ● Notes221 ● Bibliography227 ● Index235

Acknowledgments

Tom West, Brad Darrach, and Martha Ronk not only always treated me like a real writer; they also helped me to learn how to be one. The work done by Susan Ruffins to show me how a book could emerge was nothing short of he roic. Then there are readers and friends whose timely comfort or kicks in the butt kept me moving: Mary Weismantel, Gabrielle Foreman, Bill Talen, Arlene Davila, Sharon Bean, and DànaAin Davis. Jeff Tobin and Marta Savigliano always keep me sane and honest, whether they are here in Los Angeles or in Argentina. A special thanks is owed to Anne Allison and the Department of Anthropology at Duke University, for providing a semester of respite and adventure; to Paul Smith and the Department of Cultural Studies at George Mason University for lively discussion and comments; to Kye Young Park and members of the consumption colloquium atuclafor providing an “aha moment” in my figuring out what the point of this work really is. John Sherry and Russell Belk, along with Dan Cook, are among the most generous scholars and colleagues on the planet. Like a pesky tagalong kid, I try to imitate their generosity as much as possible. I also enjoyed great exchanges at the Child and Teen Consumer conference, especially with Ann Phoenix, Steve Woolgar; encouragement from James McKenna and Lee Gettler about the transitional object material kept me committed to that exploration. Por tions of the book have been previously published as follows: diary excerpts “Shopping in Ikea” and “Capitalism Makes Me Sick,”New Review of Literature

2, no. 1 (2005): 123–38; “The Consumer Diaries, or, Autoethnography in the Inverted World,”Journal of Consumer Culture7, no. 3 (2007): 335–53. To all friends and family who make appearances here, thank you in ad vance for your forbearance. Adrian Williams and Benin Gardner, without a doubt, you are my beloveds. I owe enormous debts to two women, S.A. and P.B. The debts cannot be repaid but they can be paid forward. To honor them, the royalties of this book are donated to L’Arche, an extraordinary organization whose mission is to “make explicit the dignity of every human being by building inclusive communities of faith and friendship where people with and without intellec tual disabilities share life together.”

[viii] Acknowledgments

1