John Sellars, Steve Connor
Our culture is effectively a collection of collections - collections of manuscripts and books, collections of antiquities and historical artefacts, collections of art works. If these collections had not been assembled, our culture and history as we know them would not exist. Universities would not exist without the libraries and archives upon which they depend. Collections played a central role in the development of scientific understanding. The art world is predicated upon the existence of institutional and private collectors prepared to pay for unique creations. Collectors are arguably some of the most important yet neglected figures in human history… and at the same time (with the exception of a handful of ascetics and minimalists) we are all collectors to a greater or lesser degree.
General Reading
Philipp Blom, To Have and To Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting (London: Allen Lane, 2002).
Susan M. Pearce, On Collecting; An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition (London: Routledge, 1995) Werner Muensterberger, Collecting, An Unruly Passion: Psychological Perspectives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, eds, The Cultures of Collecting (London: Reaktion, 1994).
Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects , trans. James Benedict (London: Verso, 2005), 91-114 (also in Elsner and Cardinal, Cultures of Collecting, 7-24)
One. Introduction. Confessions of a Book-Collector: The Pathology of Collecting (John Sellars, with Steve Connor)
What is it that distinguishes collecting from other forms of object acquisition? What is the pathology specific to a collector? In this session we shall consider the nature of collecting as an activity and the extent to which it constitutes an illness. We shall focus in on some examples from book collecting. Students are encouraged to visit the Freud Museum.
Key Reading:
Walter Benjamin, ‘Unpacking my Library’, in Illuminations (London: Fontana, 1992), 61-69
Further Reading:
John Forrester, ‘Mille e tre: Freud and Collecting’, in Elsner and Cardinal, eds., Cultures of Collecting, 224-251.
Esther Leslie, ‘Telescoping the Microscopic Object: Benjamin the Collector’, in Alex Coles, ed., The Optic of Walter Benjamin (London: Black Dog, 1999), 58-91
Ursula Marx, ed. Walter Benjamin’s Archive: Images, Texts, Signs, trans. Esther Leslie (London: Verso, 2007)
A.N.L. Munby, Portrait of an Obsession: The Life of Sir Thomas Phillips, the World’s Greatest Book Collector (London: Constable, 1967)
Two: Things, Objects and Quasi-Objects: Towards a General Theory of Stuff (Steve Connor)
Recent years have seen a greatly intensified preoccupation, among philosophers, historians, ethnographers, social scientists and literary critics, with the nature of material objects and our relation to them. What can the practice of collecting tell us about this?
Further Reading:
Jane Bennett, ‘The Force of Things: Steps Towards an Ecology of Matter’, Political Theory, 32 (2004): 347-372
Bill Brown, ‘Thing Theory’ Critical Inquiry, 28 (2001): 1-22. (All the essays in this special issue of Critical Inquiry devoted to ‘Things’ are of interest.)
Steven Connor, Thinking Things.
Bruno Latour, ‘Objects Too Have Agency’, in Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 63-86
Fiona Candlin and Raiford Guins, eds, The Object Reader (London: Routledge, 2009)
Three: Henry Wellcome, Collections and Science (Steve Connor, with John Sellars)
What role has collecting played in the development of scientific knowledge? There are many important collections in London that have played a role in the development of our knowledge of the natural world, such those in the Natural History Museum. We shall focus our attention on (and visit) the Wellcome Collection.
Trip to Wellcome Collection during class.
Key Reading:
Frances Larson, An Infinity of Things: How Sir Henry Wellcome Collected the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
Ken Arnold and Danielle Olsen, eds., Medicine Man: The Forgotten Museum of Henry Wellcome (London: British Museum, 2003)
Four. Ordering the World: Collections and History (Steve Connor, with John Sellars)
Trip to Enlightenment Gallery during class.
How have collections shaped our culture, our literature, our sense of history, and the very content of our history itself? In this session we shall assess the role played by collecting in our relationship with the past, paying particular attention to the role of the museum. We shall visit the ‘Enlightenment’ Gallery at the British Museum.
Key Reading:
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London: Tavistock, 1970),especially the Preface and chapter 5.
Further Reading:
Beth Lord, ‘Representing Enlightenment Space’, in Suzanne MacLeod, ed., Reshaping Museum Space: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions (London: Routledge, 2005), 146-57
Arthur MacGregor, Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the 16th to the 19th Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
Kim Sloan, ed., Enlightenment: Discovering the World in the Eighteenth Century (London: British Museum, 2003).
Five: Institutions and Archives - Tate
Key Reading:
Frances Spalding, The Tate: A History (London: Tate Gallery, 1998)
