A Shoe, a Broken Watch, and Marbles. How Objects Shape Our Memory and Our Future Cover Image

A Shoe, a Broken Watch, and Marbles. How Objects Shape Our Memory and Our Future
A Shoe, a Broken Watch, and Marbles. How Objects Shape Our Memory and Our Future

Author(s): Lea David
Subject(s): Studies in violence and power, History of the Holocaust, Politics of History/Memory, Peace and Conflict Studies
Published by: Wiener Wiesenthal Institut für Holocaust-Studien
Keywords: Objects; memory; desire objects; Holocaust; Genocide; human-object relationship;

Summary/Abstract: Desire objects – that is, personal items of the missing or killed found at the sites of mass atrocities – are often understood as the last tangible link to the absent person. In this article, I try to conceptualise what is happening in this human-object relationship and how this relationship is shaped when desire objects move through different social circuits. I demonstrate how the emotional energy charge changes with the objects’ transition from one circuit to another, which consequently leads to the alteration of the perceived value of the desire objects. Using the biography and the ascribed agency of desire objects, I trace how humanobject relations shape political action.

  • Issue Year: 9/2022
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 90-114
  • Page Count: 25
  • Language: English