The Objects of Home: How Everyday Things Can Offer or Refuse Meaning

With usura hath no man a house of good cut stoneeach block cut smooth and well fitting that design might cover their face,with usurahath no man a painted paradise on his church wall…with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags, is thy bread dry as paper, with no mountain wheat, no strong flour, with usura the line grows thick with usura is no clear demarcation and no man can find site for his dwelling.

- Ezra Pound (from Canto XLV)

‘no chair or table or stool not simple enough for shepherd lads in Galilee’

- W.B. Yeats on furnishing ThoorBallylee

The everyday things which populate a household – ornaments andfurnishings, books and music, the clothes in the wardrobe andthe food on the table – are repositories of significance. Weexpress and shape our identities in part through the objectswith which we choose to surround ourselves, and these in turninfluence the ways in which we see ourselves and the world.But if all man-made objects signify something, are they allequally meaningful? – or meaningful in the same way? In whatfollows I want to look at the ways in which everyday objectscan either build up a sense of home or refuse it.

First, however, let me clarify my use of the terms ‘meaning’and ‘home’.

‘Meaning’ is used in a sense distinct from simplesignification. When we say ‘dog’ we signify a four-leggedmammal of the family canis. Meaning, however, involves not

merely a catalogue of the elements of our experience, but anorientation towards them. Hence the word ‘dog’ hasconnotations of loyalty, stubbornness, protectiveness, and soforth. But again, it is not simply an orientation towards theindividual elements of experience that is at issue, but anorientation towards the whole. According to the Germanphilosopher Wilhelm Dilthey, ‘The category of meaningdesignates the relationship, inherent in life, of parts of alife to the whole’ (Dilthey, 1976: pg.235). Meaning refers toour ability to piece together the elements of our experienceand give them coherence across time. As such it is intimatelyconnected with memory. ‘It is only when we bring into relationwith the preoccupying present experience the cumulativeresults of similar or at least relevant, if not dissimilar,past experiences of similar potency, that the kind ofrelational structure we call ‘meaning’ emerges’ (Turner, 1983:pg.36).

The experience of home is the focus of my research. To be athome means to be embedded in a pattern of relationships topeople and place which gives rise to an inherently meaningfulexperience of the world. At its core is the process of‘dwelling’ (Heidegger, 1971). Dwelling involves theaccumulation of memories and associations in a particularplace and a relationship with things and people in theirconcrete fullness rather than as ‘instruments’ or ‘socialroles’. This in turn requires a particular relation to spaceand time. To dwell is to accumulate experience (history ormemory) in a concrete place, as opposed to moving through aworld of abstract space in obedience to the dictates ofmechanical time. Dwelling connects past, present and futurerather than severing them into disconnected moments.

This accumulation of experience can give rise to theperception of a ‘sacred landscape’ which we find in the Gaelictradition of Dinnshenchas or in the feeling with which theclassical Greeks and Romans regarded their cities. In a moreprosaic way, when we dwell we attach value and meaning to theobjects around us, and this helps to create a sense of home.On the other hand, certain characteristics of our relationshipto objects in contemporary society may block or dilute thisprocess.

One of the most prolific authors on material culture is theanthropologist Daniel Miller. In his book Stuff (2010) he arguesagainst a functionalist position which sees the objects withwhich we surround ourselves in purely instrumental terms. Ifthe potters of a particular village – like the one in North-West India where Miller did field work for his Ph.D thesis –produce over fifty different types of pot, the explanationdoes not lie in finding evidence for fifty different functionsfulfilled by the different categories of pot, but in theritual and social distinctions they symbolise. Our relation tothings is a dynamic one in which they both objectify ourconsciousness and shape it. We create cars, or clothes, or thefilm industry; but once they are created they become a part ofwho we are and change us in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.Objects also unconsciously determine our expectations, bysetting the scene within which we act and ensuring appropriatebehaviour. As Bourdieu writes, the cultural practices ofsociety are elaborated through a diversity of forms includingits material culture, from which, in turn, the members of thatsociety assimilate them (Bourdieu, 1977).

Everyday things therefore are objectifications of culturalvalues and social relationships and help, in turn, toreproduce them. But, returning to the two quotations withwhich I began this paper, there is a huge difference betweenthe values and relationships embodied in ‘a house of good cutstone/each block cut smooth and well fitting/that design mightcover their face’ and a cheap bedsit apartment. There is avast difference between the furniture Yeats had made for ThoorBallylee, ‘no chair or table or stool not simple enough forshepherd lads in Galilee’, and a plywood desk bought in Argos.

It is with this difference I am concerned.

Everyday objects can help us build up a sense of meaning andstability in our lives, anchoring us in history and place.They can crystallise important relationships, and mark alocation as our own. On the other hand, they can deflect anddefer our efforts to discover meaning in our surroundings,leaving us lost in a world of alien objects or, like the

mythical Tantalus, forever reaching after a satisfaction whichas quickly withdraws itself from our grasp.

How, then, do everyday objects help, or hinder, in theformation of that world of meaning I call home? How might thethings about us assist us to ‘find a site for our dwelling’?

Three particular areas are worth considering:

The significance given to objects by design, advertising,packaging, and merchandising

The ways in which we use objects and incorporate theminto our lives

The technological processes by which the objects comeinto being

*****

In a consumer economy, products are sold less on the basis oftheir utility than of the value or significance attached tothem by advertising and promotion. Drink this beer and womenwill find you irresistible. Eat this chocolate and you willexperience the taste of luxury. But these values are notinherent in the materials of the product, or its mode ofmanufacture, or its subsequent use: they are arbitrarilyassociated with it in order to encourage people to buy. Hencethey start to decay from the moment of purchase. An item ofclothing which is sold as the latest fashion begins to datewithin a season. A packaged food which is marketed asincorporating Italian taste or Asian exoticism loses its valuein the act of consumption. A technological gadget which isthis year’s ‘must have’ will be superseded within twelvemonths and obsolete within a couple of years.

In contrast to durable objects which accumulate more and moreassociations and meaning over time, the significance injectedinto consumer goods by marketing fades quickly, like thepattern of a cheap dye.

Moreover, the requirement to grow sales necessitates theconstant elaboration of new styles, which are marketed on thegrounds that they are expressive of the consumer’s personality

and therefore a ‘must have’. The website ‘homegoods.com’ has a‘Stylescope’ which asks the user to pick out from a list ofpictures the five which ‘speak to them’ and on this basisassigns them style personalities with names such as ‘urbanfunk’, ‘boho’, ‘spa life’, ‘new country’, ‘sassy’, ‘Vegasbaby’, and so forth. Here is the description of ‘urban funk’:

Urban Funk has undeniable funk and soul. She's at homein a place where industrial meets comfort, where over-the-top meets laid-back chill, and where retro artmeets graphic simplicity. And she does all this in away that feels totally effortless.

This is the catch-all language of the astrology column and‘cold reading’: whatever your taste, you are meant to findsomething here that speaks to you. ‘Urban Funk’ is not theexpression of a way of life, in the way that the householdarrangements of the Ainu or Kabyle express their environmentand culture: it is a collage of stylistic signals fabricatedto meet the twin marketing demands of being ‘up to date’ andhaving catch-all appeal. Hence the description is peculiarlyabstract. It is meant to capture not just a style but theessence of the reader’s personality, yet instead it achieves aspectacular blandness which makes it indistinguishable fromall the other descriptions of ‘personal style’ on the website.

The irony of a system of consumption based on the attributionof cultural value to goods is that it involves replacing theactual processes through which we fill objects withsignificance and value with a synthetic substitute. Modernconsumer culture alienates us from the objects we live withand use, in the same way as industrial capitalism alienatesthe worker from the product of their labour.

*****

Let us now consider how we use objects and incorporate theminto our lives. As we shall see, very humble objects canbecome meaningful when they have been part of our lives for along time, when we have expended care and attention on them,or because they have gained significant associations.

My girlfriend and I recently got a present from a friend ofhers who was leaving Ireland for America. It was a cast-ironskillet which had been ‘seasoned’. This means the cast-ironhas been given a non-stick surface by coating it in cookingoil and baking it in the oven. Each time you heat oil in theskillet you reinforce the ‘seasoning’. Once seasoned, theskillet should never be washed with soap, which would destroythe surface. A well-seasoned skillet is meant to improve theflavour of the food cooked in it, and Erin had been seasoninghers for eight years. It was a skill she learned from hermother, and of all the things she had to leave behind inIreland the skillet was one of those that meant most to her.

A well-loved book which we have read many times – perhapsmarking the pages or writing notes in the margins – is adeeply meaningful object. Even a pair of worn old gloves canhave meaning, as we discover in Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Artof Motorcycle Maintenance:

I care about these moldy old riding gloves. I smile at themflying through the breeze beside me because they have been therefor so many years and are so old and so tired and so rottenthere is something kind of humorous about them. They have becomefilled with oil and sweat and dirt and spattered bugs and nowwhen I set them down flat on a table, even when they are notcold, they won’t stay flat. They’ve got a memory of their own.They cost only three dollars and have been restitched so manytimes it is getting impossible to repair them, yet I take a lotof time and pains to do it anyway because I can’t imagine anynew pair taking their place. That is impractical, butpracticality isn’t the whole thing with gloves or with anythingelse.

(Pirsig, 1999: pg.49)

Note that in all these cases it is not the mere possession ofan object which turns it into a repository of meaning, but ourinteraction with it: the use we make of it and the care we putinto it.

Mementos of important events or people in our lives areanother kind of object that can help to crystallise meaningand create a sense of home. In a paper describing the qualityof ‘Homeyness’, Grant McCracken writes:

Homeyness has a mnemonic aspect…trophies, gifts from children orfriends, photographs of the family, hand-crafted pieces offurniture and decorative objects…These objects are intended torecall the presence of family and friendship relationships,family events, ritual passages, and community associations…Thisaspect of homeyness has the effect of deeply personalizing thepresent circumstances.

(McCracken, 1989: pg.173)

Framed photographs of loved ones, holiday souvenirs, giftsthat we have preserved, presentations made by organisations wehave belonged to – these together make up the physical recordof a life and a pattern of relationships. Objects that havebeen physically crafted by ourselves or people close to us areespecially powerful repositories of meaning, because of theamount of care and effort that has been incorporated in them.

Something similar happens in collecting. Whether thecollection is of books, stamps, model racing cars, dolls orporcelain, it tends to become a record of our life, a markerof our presence in the world. Here is Walter Benjaminmdescribing his feelings on unpacking his library:

Now I am on the last half-emptied case and it is way pastmidnight. Other thoughts fill me than the ones I am talkingabout – not thoughts but images, memories. Memories of thecities in which I found so many things: Riga, Naples, Munich,Danzig, Moscow, Florence, Basel, Paris…memories of the roomswhere these books had been housed, of my student’s den inMunich, of my room in Bern, of the solitude of Iseltwald on theLake of Brienz, and finally of my boyhood room, the formerlocation of only four or five of the several thousand volumesthat are piled up around me.

(Benjamin, 1992: pg.67)

Lastly, there is the way objects become meaningful throughtheir incorporation in personal or family rituals. Forexample, the decorations we hang on a Christmas tree may inthemselves be cheap, mass-produced, and without character. Butby virtue of their incorporation in the annual ritual ofdecorating the house for Christmas, they take on meaning.Particularly if old decorations are kept, and the occasional

new one bought each year, a tree may become a physicalrepository keeping alive the memory of many Christmases.

In all these cases we take objects, no matter what theirorigin, and incorporate them into our lives, ‘staying withthem’ in Heideggerean terminology and thereby endowing themwith meaning and using them to make ourselves a home.

But note this: in each case, the objects allowed us toincorporate them in a meaningful manner into our lives. Thecast-iron skillet is an enduring object which can be seasonedyear after year – the owner was not forced to replace itbecause the handle fell off after six months. The book allowsus handle it and write on its pages – unlike a kindle edition.The motorcycle gloves can be repaired with needle and thread.And a framed family photo is an iconic object in a way thathundreds of pictures stored on a digital camera or uploaded onFacebook can never be.

So we come to the question of technology and how the objectsaround us are produced.

*****

A central theme of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance istechnology and our relationship to it, and particularly how wecan overcome our alienation from it. This Pirsig attempts toachieve by coming to know and care for his motorcycle, takingapart and putting together the engine, cleaning it,maintaining it, and repairing it. However while there is muchof value in Pirsig’s approach, his book was published in 1974.Technology has developed since then. In particular, weencounter more and more ‘black box’ technologies in our dailylives.

A black box is a device which can be viewed solely in terms ofits input, output and transfer characteristics without anyknowledge of its internal workings. The opposite of a blackbox is a system where the inner components or logic areavailable for inspection; this is known as a glass box or awhite box. Take the example of a car: if you have a problem,the mechanic will hopefully identify the part responsible, but

rather than attempting to fix that part, today they willsimply replace it with a new one ordered from themanufacturers. The individual parts of the car engine havebecome ‘black boxes’, about whose interior workings even themechanics know relatively little.

‘Black box’ technologies proliferate in our lives: all theelectronic gadgets that clutter the modern home are examples.They are central to our lives, but most of us have no idea howthey work, let alone how to fix them if they go wrong. Theshiny, plastic surfaces of these objects seem to deliberatelydistract us from the mystery of what goes on in their insides.These objects refuse depth. Certainly, a collection oftechnological objects can express an individual’s interest ingadgets and sense of themselves as a ‘technologically savvy’.But the relationship remains on the surface, a world away fromthe intimacy generated by Pirsig’s tinkering with hismotorbike.

These opaque, shiny surfaces are not confined to flat screentelevisions and mobile phones. They are all around us, inkitchen appliances, bathroom fittings, and utensils likeplastic bins and storage boxes. They stress the utilitarianfunctionality of these objects, parade their efficiency, andin doing so guarantee we will throw them away and purchase areplacement the moment their functioning is impaired. We willdo so automatically and without regret, because they have beendesigned in such a way as to refuse any deeper engagement oraffect.

If we do not understand the inner workings of many of theobjects with which we surround ourselves, neither do we knowhow they are produced. This applies not just to sophisticatedtechnologies, but to something as basic as our food (as therecent controversy about horsemeat underlines). Whereas oncemost of the objects in a household would have beencomprehensible in the sense that the householder would haveknown where they came from and how they were made, today weare surrounded with objects which are simultaneously depthlessand mysterious. These objects tie us into a system of globalsupply chains of mind-boggling complexity. Below is a diagramof the supply chain for a laptop computer: it includes over

forty nodes on all six continents (downloaded fromwww.sourcemap.com):

Even this expresses only a fraction of the complexity of thesystem required to supply us with one consumer product. Takethe petroleum required to power its manufacture and make theplastic components: this, in turn, requires incrediblysophisticated technologies to discover, extract and process aswell as the educational infrastructure to train the associatedengineers and technicians. Transporting the various componentsof the laptop around the globe also requires a high-techtransport system integrating shipping, rail, air, and road –which in turn requires the manufacture of a multitude ofcomponents and another set of skilled workers…. And so wecould go on, literally ad infinitum, simply to outline what isrequired to deliver one among the multitude of products andservices we consume daily.

The point is that the systems required to provide us with anordinary item of consumer technology are now so incrediblycomplex they are almost beyond our comprehension. This,together with the technology incorporated in many of theproducts themselves, makes these objects ‘black boxes’ whichare fundamentally alien and mysterious. It is increasinglydifficult to build a home with the products of contemporarysociety, to incorporate them in a meaningful and enduring wayinto our lives. More and more of the objects around us arecharacterised by a refusal of meaning.

*****

Let us summarise the argument so far. In the course of ourdaily lives we endow objects with significance, as we createthem, care for them, dwell with them, and use them. InHusserl’s terms, our relationship to the world is intentional:we cannot help but endow our surroundings with value. Whenthese objects make a common world of meaning, a coherentrecord of our life’s journey, of important relationships anddaily routines, they help create a home. However importantforces in contemporary society work against this process.Black box technologies refuse meaning, while consumer culturesubstitutes synthetic value for that which objects gainthrough incorporation in the lived reality of an individual orfamily. Both promote endless innovation, a cult of novelty,and a throwaway culture where objects frequently do not endurelong enough to be incorporated into a world of meaning. Theresult is our increasing alienation from the objects we mightuse to build a home.

There is a parallel here with the philosophy of JacquesDerrida (indeed, post-structuralism as a whole is a symptom ofour contemporary problem with meaning). For Derrida, words andsigns can never fully summon forth what they mean, but canonly be defined through an appeal to other words, from whichthey differ. Thus meaning is forever "deferred" or postponedthrough an endless chain of signifiers. Instead of being‘present’ in a sign, meaning is produced by the structure oflanguage as a whole.

Thus Derrida writes: ‘the signified concept is never presentin and of itself, in a sufficient presence that would referonly to itself…every concept is inscribed in a chain or in asystem within which it refers to the other, to other concepts,by means of the systematic play of differences’ (1982: pg.10).Likewise we might say that most of the objects around us areinscribed in a global system within which they refer to aninfinite number of other objects, so that their significanceis never present in and of themselves. Or again: ‘each so-called "present" element…is related to something other thanitself, thereby keeping within itself the mark of the pastelement, and already letting itself be vitiated by the mark ofits relation to the future element’ (Derrida, 1982: pg.13).

Likewise everyday objects bear the ‘mark’ of the technologiesby which they were manufactured, as well as the merchandisingwhich stamped them with their significance; this alreadycondemns them to obsolescence and points beyond them to theirsuccessors. Just as for Derrida there is no foundational Beingbehind the play of different beings, so these objects have no‘essential’ significance, beyond their position in a globalsystem of production and consumption. Just as for Derridameaning flees us amidst endless chains of signification, so inthe objects of everyday life we discover the ‘trace’ of globalnetworks which extend far beyond our visible horizon.

In other words, such objects lead us relentlessly anddeterminedly away from home.

For Derrida language is a human structure, whose signifiershave a purely arbitrary relation to that which they signify.For Heidegger, on the other hand, human language is secondary,its foundation being a primeval language which arises from thetruth of the world, from reality itself, and not from theinwardness of man (Vycinas, 1961: pg.271). We can approachthis truth through ‘sparing’ or ‘letting be’, an attitudewhich is sharply contrasted with the modern domination ofthings (Vycinas, 1961: pg.15). Such ‘staying with things’ isan aspect of dwelling, which means ‘to stay, to remain inplace’, but also ‘to cherish and protect, to preserve and carefor’ the things and places among which we dwell (Heidegger,1971). Dwelling manifests itself in cultivation andconstruction which respects the character of that with whichit works. This suggests a very different relation to objectsfrom one where we consume them or throw them away as we raceto lay our hands on the next fashion or the latest gadget. Itis reminiscent of the kind of care that Pirsig discovered inthe art of motorcycle maintenance. But to ‘stay with things’requires objects which will ‘stay’ with us; durable ratherthan throw-away, open rather than black box, produced locallyrather than at the nexus of global supply chains, bearing thesignature of craft rather than technological anonymity,expressive of beauty rather than utilitarian functionalism.

******

Today it is seen as ‘natural’ for people to desire to consumemore and more, to endlessly accumulate material goods, to usethings up and throw them out at ever-increasing speed. Buthistorically, a society where we aim to ‘update’ our mobilephone or I-pad almost as soon as we have purchased them isdeeply abnormal; the norm is one where we carefully preserve alimited number of objects that have family or traditionalsignificance and where we endow objects with meaning throughtheir repeated use in ritual and social behaviour.

We cannot do without ‘stuff’. Without the objectification ofhuman values and meaning in physical objects our culture wouldbe deeply impoverished. What is problematic is when thisprocess becomes divorced from concrete individuals andhistorical communities, and produces huge quantities ofobjects which are ephemeral, narrowly functional, or resistantto incorporation in those activities of everyday life whichgenerate meaning.

It is because we are surrounded by objects which refusemeaning and resist being incorporated into a stable home thatwe seek to consume more and more – like the addict looking torepeat the buzz he got from his first fix.

The consequence is that we have built an unsustainable societyin a world which is rapidly approaching its ecological limits.‘Sustainability’, on the other hand, is not about doingwithout things, but rebuilding our relationship with things.

A sustainable society would be neither a technologicalwonderland nor a place of grim and puritanical denial. Ratherit would be one where each family possessed a ‘house of goodcut stone’ built to endure through the generations; where ourtables and stools and chairs carried the stamp of theindividual craftsman who made them; where our bread had theflavour of mountain wheat, and the glory of a ‘paintedparadise’ had replaced the delusive visions of Hollywood andMadison Avenue.

References

Benjamin, Walter (1992), ‘Unpacking My Library: A talk about bookcollecting’ in Walter Benjamin (transl. Harry Zohn) Illuminations. NewYork: Harcourt

Bourdieu, Pierre (1977), Outline of a Theory of Practice (transl. RichardNice). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Derrida, Jacques (1982) (transl. Alan Bass), Margins of Philosophy.Brighton: Harvester

Dilthey, Wilhelm (1976), Selected Writings (transl. H. P. Rickman).Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Heidegger, Martin (1971), ‘Being, Dwelling, Thinking’ fromHeidegger, Martin, Poetry, Language, Thought (trans. Albert Hofstadter).New York: Harper

McCracken, Grant (1989), ‘Homeyness: A cultural account of oneconstellation of consumer goods and meanings’, in Interpretive ConsumerResearch, 1989, pgs.168-183

Miller, Daniel (2010), Stuff. Cambridge: Polity Press

Pirsig, Robert M. (1999), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. London:Vintage

Turner, Victor (1986), ‘Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama: An Essay in theAnthropology of Experience’ in Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner (eds.), The Anthropology ofExperience. Illinois: University of Illinois Press

Vycinas, Vincent (1961), Earth and Gods: An Introduction to the Philosophy ofMartin Heidegger. Martinus Nijhoff: The Hague

www.homegoods.com

www.sourcemap.com