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Valuing Affect: The Centrality of Emotion, Memory, and Identity in Garage Sale Exchange
Author(s) -
Herrmann Gretchen M.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
anthropology of consciousness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 14
eISSN - 1556-3537
pISSN - 1053-4202
DOI - 10.1111/anoc.12040
Subject(s) - affect (linguistics) , centrality , identity (music) , psychology , advertising , social psychology , aesthetics , cognitive psychology , business , communication , art , mathematics , combinatorics
This article draws upon affect theory to analyze transformations of garage sale sellers through the exchange of their affectively charged possessions. Garage sales are awash with human emotion; they feature used personal belongings suffused with identities, histories, stories, and memories that are moved along with affect. The objects for sale are “sticky” in that they act as vessels and glue for strands of sentiment to reflexively pass between sellers and buyers, transmitting affective orientations, whether positive or negative. The affective elements of garage sale goods are contagious as they can intersubjectively leap from one body to another.