Touching Objects. What We Reached For After My Sister’s Death Rebecca Wingett
AAD Dissertation Studio 17 2020–21
Extracts from Rebecca Wingett, Touching Objects: What We Reached For After My Sister’s Death
Dissertation Studio 17 Souvenir Tutor: Lesley Stevenson
School of Art, Architecture and Design London Metropolitan University 2021
Physical and social dimensions become blurred due to objects’ symbolic ecology and ability to represent the relationships with the dead or those we have lost. And, as objects are material possessions which we take responsibility for and control, we can delve deeper into the relationship we have with our objects, more so than we could with the living. We remember people for the glasses they wore or the car they drove; people aren’t independent or detached from their objects, as objects are their owners and their identities.
CHAPTER 2 PERMANENT OBJECTS Objects can provide continuity after circumstances in our lives change, like death or after a relationship breaks down. However, we also enter into a longer-term relationship with our things, as we continue to use them long after these tragedies. Despite death being a common and confirmed part of life, we still struggle to accept it, especially when the circumstances are unordinary. Most objects have permanent qualities, both materially and metaphorically, offering records of substance, traces of the self and witnesses to existence. Moreover, as objects contribute towards our sense of self, they can provide continuity and prolong these co-constructed identities, even after death. Miller uncovers common ways that objects can serve continuity in our lives, like how we buy presents for the dead or on their behalf (2009, p508). Even though we are perfectly aware, and the receiver is perfectly aware, that the individual has not picked that gift out, signed their name in that card, or wrapped that present themselves, we still continue to do so as this gives a sense of perpetuating their life after death. Society today has shifted towards a largely secular one; we tend not to rely on religious traditions and practices, like keeping mourning jewels from the dead or visiting their grave every Sunday. Instead, we find our own methods of coping with death, creating a personal relationship between the dead and the living, impeding anyone from interfering. Miller suggests that we continue using these synecdoche’s because it allows us to give form and humanity to the dead as we struggle to accept their absence. He further explains that “such things bring the dead and the living into immediate proximity” (p509). This suggests that objects can help lost or damaged relationships continue, progressing through tragedy. One of Millers examples of this is his case study of Elia, who inherited clothes and jewellery from her mother, which had a double resonance as they had also belonged to her aunt previously. Firstly, she would wear them alone in private, and then for special occasions, before using them for everyday wear. Miller explains her behaviour as she is trying to “find ways to bring her into social ways and family events, giving a good time to her” (509). The clothes have now taken on the role of her mother and aunt combined, as Miller indicates the clothes have also taken on their emotions, opinions, fears, and desires, continuing their sense of selves and identities. Inherited objects can also hold a certain power or influence over us to become more like how the dead want us to be, pressuring us to retain this expectation. As well as this, certain objects could be buried with the dead, like a watch that was worn every day, or their favourite dress, which only adds weight to the everyday, overlooked objects left behind that now have a greater significance (pp510-515). By continuing our relationships with objects, we can therefore continue our relationships with the dead as their absence is included into the present. Why we keep objects and use them during difficult times in our lives is because they act as material traces and serve as witnesses to the dead. Tobin explains that objects contain personal identities before their sense of self may change or erode. They can also represent ties or bonds with
others (1996, p46). As people grow, change, and die, there is sometimes a sense of need to preserve their personality and character, which can be done with objects. Csikszentmihalyi reinforces this as he gives examples of a widowed wife cherishing her husband’s hand-made desk that embodied his ideas of “simplicity and economy” (1991, p27) or keeping his razor in the medicine cupboard. Keeping these objects, especially in their original state or place, can help continue relationships and identities. Csikszentmihalyi further explains that “to be effective in conveying meaning, the owner has to be personally involved with the artifact” and therefore “enter into an active, symbolic relationship with it” (p27). It is suggested that due to objects “symbolic ecology” (p27), they can represent the relationship we once had with the dead, and the relationship the dead had with their objects, helping to serve continuity by providing a new relationship to be perused. Therefore, the hand-made desk becomes ever more so cherished because it represents ideologies and “personified qualities of that person” (p27). The razor is kept in the same place because the widows’ husband would use that razor nearly every day, in his hands and on his skin. Even though she knows her husband will not be returning to shave again, the object is thus kept in its original place, and in its original condition, to continue her husband’s relationship with the razor, as well as her own personal relationship with her husband.
Similar to the razor, my sister’s toothbrush has also been kept in its original place and condition. My sister had a pink electric Bratz toothbrush that my father brought for her at the peak of her Bratz doll obsession. After using her toothbrush each time, she left behind clues of her identity and indexical traces of her body, like scratch marks on the button because her fingernails were too long, worn out bristles after brushing her teeth, or marks of the particular toothpaste she used because she often had a dry mouth. After she died, the toothbrush remained in the cupboard, even surviving bathroom redecorating, where my father placed by sister’s toothbrush back into the pot with all the others. As he bought the object himself, he too has entered into a relationship with it, as it doesn’t only evoke memories of his daughter using it, but also the opportunities he once had to buy her these everyday necessities. I am sure he did not even ponder the thought of throwing it away, or at very least, keep it tucked away at the back of the cupboard. Tobin explains that by using the past to preserve the self, but not living in the past, reflects the process of retaining continuity (1996, p47) and preserving identities.
These types of objects become materially permanent in our lives as Jennifer Gonzalez suggests that they are kept as mnemonic devices that could represent something else yet act as “spaces of the souvenir” (1995, p141). Like my sister’s toothbrush, it is an everyday, valueless object, yet my father has kept it as a reminder and memory of his daughter. However, it could be argued that if objects are helping us continue our relationships with the dead, then why do we still struggle and feel pain long after death? Miller explains that “materialisation has dual consequences in that objects we use to control our relation to loss may equally confront us with unwelcome or unexpected reminders of this loss” (2009, p509). The uncanny feelings associated with these objects are thus involuntary and “ought to have been kept concealed” (Freud, 1919, p13), but as they have homely and familiar sensations associated with them, we nonetheless clutch onto them in times of grief. It could be said that whilst objects can help us to serve continuity, they can also provide hinderances. Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey suggest that “material objects can evoke the dead” (2001, p2) as well as evoke fears of loss of our own identity, self, or oblivion. They further suggest that “material culture mediates our relationships with the dead” as they are “made to remind us of the deaths of others and our own mortality” (p2). Another explanation is because objects can also represent mourning itself, rather than the dead. Therefore, by clinging onto these objects, we are too clinging onto the pain of death, as Miller describes it as a “loss of a loss” (2009, p510). Similar to how objects can evoke painful memories, they are nostalgic objects that make us long for previous periods in our lives. However, Gonzalez explains that “nostalgia is always a desire for desire itself” and therefore “it cannot be satisfied because it is the longing itself that structured this desire” (1995, p137). With this said, in terms of my sister’s toothbrush, my father is longing for irretrievable moments of my sister’s existence. It can be drawn upon then that objects do play a role in difficult times in our lives, like after death, or in the longer term, as they can retain a sense of continuity and preservation. Objects can be used as replacements or substitutes for the physical body as we try to keep the object itself alive, as we cannot the dead, either by wearing it, using it, or keeping it. As objects serve as witness to our existence, they can provide continuity after death due to the indexical traces they leave behind. However, whilst they are not powerful enough to bring our loved one back in terms of physical self, objects do have symbolic power in terms of continuing a sense of the lost self.
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