Bill Brown, perhaps best known as the expositor of Thing Theory (... a term that at NAPS drew chuckles from even some of the more illustrious attendees ...) explains his development of Heidegger's Thing/Object distinction as follows: “We begin to confront the thingness of objects when they stop working for us: when the drill breaks, when the car stalls, when the windows get filthy, when their flow within the circuits of production and distribution, consumption and exhibition, has been arrested, however momentarily.”
Patricia Cox Miller who in her recent monograph The Corporeal Imagination makes use of Thing Theory elaborates: "In other words, an object becomes a 'thing' when it can no longer be taken for granted as part of the everyday world of the naturalized environment in which objects such as clean windows are so familiar as not to be noticed."
I've been thinking about these lofty concepts primarily because for me a number of "objects" took a turn towards "thing-ness" this week -- the natural function of, say, an indefinitely renewable lease or an unobstructed Eustachian tube in my right ear revealed themselves as anything but natural. Things broke, to a greater or lesser extent, and my efforts to return them to their previous happy state of objectness have consumed a lot more of my time than I had anticipated. With any luck, everything should be back on track however -- and thus concludes the business of things.
Patricia Cox Miller who in her recent monograph The Corporeal Imagination makes use of Thing Theory elaborates: "In other words, an object becomes a 'thing' when it can no longer be taken for granted as part of the everyday world of the naturalized environment in which objects such as clean windows are so familiar as not to be noticed."
I've been thinking about these lofty concepts primarily because for me a number of "objects" took a turn towards "thing-ness" this week -- the natural function of, say, an indefinitely renewable lease or an unobstructed Eustachian tube in my right ear revealed themselves as anything but natural. Things broke, to a greater or lesser extent, and my efforts to return them to their previous happy state of objectness have consumed a lot more of my time than I had anticipated. With any luck, everything should be back on track however -- and thus concludes the business of things.
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