Stuff Theory: Everyday Objects, Radical Materialism

289 Pages·2014·2.05 MB·English

by  Boscagli

Stuff Th eory
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Stuff Th eory
Everyday Objects, Radical
Materialism
Maurizia Boscagli
NEW YORK • LONDON • NEW DELHI • SYDNEY
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Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
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New York London
NY 10018 WC1B 3DP
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Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2014
© Maurizia Boscagli 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
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permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or
refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN: HB: 978-1-6235-6268-7
PB: 978-1-6235-6225-0
ePub: 978-1-6235-6630-2
ePDF: 978-1-6235-6057-7
Typeset by Refi neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk, UK

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To Enda, Francesco, and Biba
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Contents
Introduction: Of Jena Glassware and Potatoes: Matter in the Moment 1
1 Homeopathic Benjamin: A Flexible Poetics of Matter 37
2 For the Unnatural Use of Clothes: Fashion as Cultural Assault 81
3 Paris circa 1968: Cool Space, Decoration, Revolution 127
4 “You Must Remember Th is”: Memory Objects in the Age of
Erasable Memory 185
5 Garbage in Th eory: Waste Aesthetics 227
Envoi: What Should We Do with Our Stuff ? 269
Index 273
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Introduction
Of Jena Glassware and Potatoes:
Matter in the Moment
“Stuff ” (“ La Roba ”) is the title of a novella by the Sicilian novelist Giovanni
Verga. Published in 1883, it is the story of a poor and dispossessed day laborer,
Mazzarò, who, through his cunning and hard work, manages to acquire all
the possessions (“l a roba ”) of his employer, the Baron. Although he has
become immensely rich, Mazzarò keeps on living like a pauper, eating bread
and onions, and anxiously watching over his lands, harvests, and animals for
fear of being robbed by his employees. When he grows old and is advised to
forget about his stuff and rather “think about his soul,” he gets angry, and
running in the yard like a madman, “he began to hit all the ducks and turkeys
with his cane to kill them,” shouting “Stuff , my stuff , come along with me.” 1
Th is parable of late nineteenth- century materialism centered on the fi gure
of the peasant entrepreneur in post- feudal Sicily is a story of class r essentiment
and subaltern determination that stems directly from Mazzarò’s own
suff ering, his recognition that the value of his stuff equals the slave- like labor
it took to acquire it. Mazzarò’s identifi cation with his possessions (“It seemed
as if Mazzarò’s body was stretched down all along his land, and that one,
walking through the countryside, was in fact walking on his body”) is more
than the delusion of a miser or fetishist. He is almost touching in his
attachment to the stuff that, in the narrative of humanism, doesn’t “make”
man, his refusal of the idea that your possessions are what you leave behind,
and that c e qui reste is really the spirit. Mazzarò’s connection to stuff is
economic and aff ective, abstract a nd somatic. When he invokes a paradoxical
immediacy in his cry “Stuff , my stuff , come along with me,” we know that
Mazzarò and his stuff share a deep proximity and commonality: having lived
together, they should die together. In this image of untranscended matter, and
of a man both dominating and dominated by it, the story opens a vista to a
traffi c between subject and object at odds with the classical dialectical
opposition of these terms.
Verga’s story anticipates a relationship between human and non- human,
animate and non- animate, subject and object that is only now becoming
visible. Th is new relation of the subject and his stuff , brought about by new
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