Displaced Things

Displaced Things explores the movements of material things from one setting to another. Its analysis examines how the qualities of objects, and the meanings and values with which they are attributed, change as they are repeatedly re-contextualised. The volume argues that our understanding of the significance and implications of the re-contextualisations of things is enhanced by re-conceptualising them as a series of displacements and taking the object’s point of view as the principle starting point of the analysis. Additionally, it demonstrates that to do so not only augments our comprehension of the significance of things and the complexities of their relationships with human beings, but also problematizes our notions of the settings through which they move – in particular those of museum and ‘heritage’, definable as they are by their particular approaches to the re-contextualisations of things.

Furthermore, the book contends that displaced things are no more ‘lost’ or rendered somehow inauthentic or useless than are displaced people; rather, the series of shifts by which contexts, meanings, values and even material attributes may alter over time are part of a continual process of change – sometimes gradual, sometimes abrupt – and each moment and state along the way has its own validity and opportunities. In this perspective, the last part of the book suggests, an object-centred view of settings such as museums, need not see them as sterile repositories of ‘dead’ and decaying artefacts but instead has profound implications for envisioning the possibilities of things.