Restabilizing attachment to cultural objects. Aesthetics, emotions and biography

Abstract

The scholarship on aesthetics and materiality has studied how objects help shape identity, social action and subjectivity. Objects, as 'equipment[s] for living' (Luhmann 2000), become the 'obligatory passage points humans have to contend with in order to pursue their projects (Latour 1991). They provide patterns to which bodies can unconsciously latch onto, or help human agents work towards particular states of being (DeNora 2000, 2003). Objects are central in the long term process of taste construction, as any attachment to an object is made out of a delicate equilibrium of mediators, bodies, situations and techniques (Hennion and his collaborators (Hennion and Fouquet 2001; Hennion and Gomart 1999). In all of these accounts objects are the end result of long-term processes of stabilization, in which the actual material object (a musical piece, a sculpture, an art installation, a glass of wine, the oeuvre of Bach as we know it) is both a result and yet a key co-producer of its own generation. Whereas the literature has been generous and detailed in exploring the processes of assembling and sustaining object-centered attachments, it has not sufficiently engaged with what happens when the aesthetic elements of cultural artifacts that have produced emotional resonance are transformed: what do these artifacts morph into? What explains the transition (or not) of different cultural objects? And relatedly, what happens to the key aesthetic qualities that were so central to how the objects had been defined, and to those who have emotionally attached to them? To answer these questions, this article uses as exemplars two different cases of attachment, predicated on the distinctive features of a cultural object--the transcendence of opera and the authenticity of a soccer jersey--that have undergone transformations.

Making Sense of Things: Constructing Aesthetic Experience in Museum Gardens and Galleries

“…This longstanding challenge to sociologists of art resonates with broader research suggesting cultural sociologists would benefit considerably from increased attention to materiality (Domínguez Rubio 2014;Griswold et al 2013;McDonnell 2010;Mukerji 1994), defined as how objects and environments act upon people to influence action in ways that cannot be reduced to cognitive representations (Mukerji 1997). See Benzecry (2015) for a helpful recent parsing of literatures on aesthetics and materiality. 5 My use of 'sensory conventions' draws on economic theories of conventions as shared templates for interpreting situations and structuring action (Biggart and Beamish 2003), but also on cultural and organizational studies of conventions in sociology, particularly Becker's ([1982] 2008) notion of art as the product of collective action and his view of culture as negotiated through interactions organized by conventions.…”

Reviewing strategies and the normalization of uncertain texts

“…For field theory, organizations, people, and goods use their symbolic and economic capital to reach or maintain an advantageous position in a given cultural field. Usage of such capital makes entry easier for conforming followers and more difficult for innovative newcomers (Allen and Lincoln 2004;Benzecry 2015;Foster et al 2011;Griswold et al 2013;Ravasi et al 2011). Unlike field theory, neo-institutionalist theory shows that the production and reception of influential cultural products is not exclusively driven by competition and power struggles among organizations or people in the cultural sector, and it highlights the role of knowledge experts in shaping key decisions within organizations (DiMaggio 1987;Franssen and Kuipers 2013).…”

The Emotional Life of Cultural Objects

“…More recently one of the authors of this chapter (Benzecry, 2015) re-appropriated the Lacanian concept of partial object, or object a, in order to explain how amateurs who have been attached to a cultural object for a long time aim to find another object that would produce a similar emotional resonance. He used the idea of partial object in order to explain how amateurs engaged with a simile that lashed-up including some (but not all) of the artifacts, practices and technologies of the self glued together by the "original" cultural object.…”

“…Another line of research exploring how objects shape the nature of the social bond can be found in the renewed attention to the role that infrastructures and the built environment play in creating the silent linkages between action, choices and forms of judgment (Domínguez Rubio and Fogué, 2015). Some scholars have explored how urban planning and architecture have been used to hardwire moral and cultural categories into the built environment (Graham & MacFarlane, 2001, 2015Joyce 2003). Others have explored how the role of the built environment in the articulation different forms of participation and exclusion in the body politic (Lezaun & Marres, 2011), while others have focused on how contemporary processes of meaning-making or truth-making are mediated by the particular affordances offered by different media infrastructures and platforms (Parks and Starosielski, 2015;Gillespie, Boczkowski & Foot, 2014).…”