The Collector's World

Abstract

The article discusses the figure of the collector. We start with positioning the collector in relation to a lack, emphasizing that collecting is not about aesthetic beauty, pleasure or even perfectness, but primarily about filling a gap. The collection itself is merely a by-product of the desire to collect. Discussing how this desire is socially mediated, we move on to contextualizing the collector in relation to the distinction between the useful and the useless. We stress, in this context, that collecting is an inoperative praxis. This is followed by a discussion of the collector's psychopathology in terms of affects and interpassivity. Finally, we turn to the history of the collector and to collecting as a field in sociological terms, and end with articulating a typology of the collector.