Things Theory: Accumulation and Amassment - ACLA Seminar - NYU March 20-23, 2013
With the enormous success of A&E's Hoarders and TLC's variant Hoarding: Buried Alive, and with the inclusion of "Hoarding Disorder" in the revised Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, the last decade has seen an overwhelming outpouring of attention to people who accumulate things. "Things Theory" will consider this contemporary invention of and interest in the hoarder within a broader literary and cultural context that encompasses collectors, fetishists, misers, and other figures defined by their attachments to things. Seminar participants may wish to engage with critical texts by Walter Benjamin, Jane Bennett, and Susan Stewart, and/or to reflect upon the following questions:
Submit paper proposal (250 word maximum) here: http://www.acla.org/submit/
KEYWORDS: Hoarding, Collecting, Accumulation, Waste, Historical Materialism, Thing Theory, Fetishism, Objects, Planned Obsolescence, Vibrant Matter, Mimesis