Blog 3 December 19th

I read statistics recently that 45% of the world’s human population celebrates Christmas in one form or another. It may not be a state sanctioned holiday – it’s alleged for example that although there is no official time off in Japan, many people buy and presumably enjoy a KFC meal with family on Christmas Eve.

So I’m thinking about the ‘commercialness’ of things, and the chain of events that need to take place for this to happen, alongside the human actions that must accompany these.

Let’s take the example of the designer handbag. Many fortunate individuals may receive one of these as a gift for Christmas. But what needs to happen for a handbag to become designer, and at the same time become an object of desire?

A handbag is an assemblage – it has agency. It’s not just the ridiculous material ingredients from which it is constructed – it’s the behaviour of these items together that create something other than the sum of its parts, a menu so imbued with value attributions targeted at those to whom such things – a logo, a button, thread, colours – really matter if they are presented together in one place at one time. such a presentation isn’t an accident, it’s a re-presentation with intent. I suggest its malevolent intent, as the desire motivating it is not about the benefit of the purchaser – it’s about parting them from their hard-earned cash as they pursue something utterly trivial in the grand scheme of human existence. But that’s because my perception of benefit differs from that of the people who love these things.

If a person loves designer handbags, then the purchase or gift of one brings happiness and presumably the satisfaction of a well chosen gift. But what are the ramifications, the ripples that permeate the environment from the acquisition of this particular piece of capital?

A designer handbag. Is ownership a signifier of wealth, status, I’ve made it, someone else values me so much they spent a fortune on me, my bag (life) is therefore better than yours? Does the concept divide us? Isn’t that what we want, to be stratified, to understand where we are in the pecking order of life?

I can’t be doing with defining people and things through the lens of possession of capital. Not emotional, not linguistic, not social. Do we do this because we need to quantify each other in order to better understand ourselves? Much research seems to me to attempt this. But the assemblage of the handbag doesn’t function in the same way as my aptitude for language learning… not that researchers would make a claim for this, but there’s something fundamentally not right here, in my view.

If we’re trying to find a way in to each other, why would we start with an example of capital we possess through circumstance, acquisition or by nature’s gift? One thing is not one thing – it’s a complex arrangement of so much that has come together in so many different dimensions that it can’t possibly be static – so it ‘isn’t’ – it is ‘a ‘becoming’ – its effects are being felt all over the place, in a network, a web of affect, intellect and material interwoven with the chronological.

So a designer handbag – or something similar, a watch, a pair of shoes, is in fact a multi-dimensional talisman. A glittering many faceted object mirroring so much that really isn’t very nice about the human condition. I wonder if we’ll ever be able to fully escape from this. I do think we ought to be aware of it. I’ll not think less of you if you aren’t consciously flaunting your thraldom to the desiring machine.

Roll on Christmas.