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Evocative Objects: Things We Think with

Evocative Objects: Things We Think with Cover

ISBN13: 9780262201681
ISBN10: 0262201682
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

For Sherry Turkle, "We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with." In Evocative Objects, Turkle collects writings by scientists, humanists, artists, and designers that trace the power of everyday things. These essays reveal objects as emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain relationships, and provoke new ideas.These days, scholars show new interest in the importance of the concrete. This volume's special contribution is its focus on everyday riches: the simplest of objects--an apple, a datebook, a laptop computer--are shown to bring philosophy down to earth. The poet contends, "No ideas but in things." The notion of evocative objects goes further: objects carry both ideas and passions. In our relations to things, thought and feeling are inseparable.Whether it's a student's beloved 1964 Ford Falcon (left behind for a station wagon and motherhood), or a cello that inspires a meditation on fatherhood, the intimate objects in this collection are used to reflect on larger themes--the role of objects in design and play, discipline and desire, history and exchange, mourning and memory, transition and passage, meditation and new vision.In the interest of enriching these connections, Turkle pairs each autobiographical essay with a text from philosophy, history, literature, or theory, creating juxtapositions at once playful and profound. So we have Howard Gardner's keyboards and Lev Vygotsky's hobbyhorses; William Mitchell's Melbourne train and Roland Barthes' pleasures of text; Joseph Cevetello's glucometer and Donna Haraway's cyborgs. Each essay is framed by images that are themselves evocative. Essays by Turkle begin and end the collection, inviting us to look more closely at the everyday objects of our lives, the familiar objects that drive our routines, hold our affections, and open out our world in unexpected ways.

Synopsis:

Autobiographical essays, framed by two interpretive essays by the editor, describe the power of an object to evoke emotion and provoke thought: reflections on a cello, a laptop computer, a 1964 Ford Falcon, an apple, a mummy in a museum, and other "things-to-think-with."

Synopsis:

Autobiographical essays, framed by two interpretive essays by the editor, describe the power of an object to evoke emotion and provoke thought: reflections on a cello, a laptop computer, a 1964 Ford Falcon, an apple, a mummy in a museum, and other & quot; things-to-think-with.& quot;

Synopsis:

For Sherry Turkle, We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with. In

About the Author

Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and Founder and Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. A psychoanalytically trained sociologist and psychologist, she is the author of The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (Twentieth Anniversary Edition, MIT Press), Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, and Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution. She is the editor of Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, Falling for Science: Objects in Mind, and The Inner History of Devices, all three published by the MIT Press.

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Elizabeth L, December 11, 2009 (view all comments by Elizabeth L)
This book is one of a number recently published, all of which justify themselves as providing needed voices for material objects in our culture. In a way, it makes good sense that this type of analysis was ignored by scholars so often. In an academic climate where technological determinism is practically taboo, scholarship turned away from object-specific histories. However, as Turkle's collection both shows and tells, it did so at the expense of fully illuminating the vast meanings objects evoke for users and scholars alike. I like how this book manages to be a hybrid of theoretical insights into the importance of objects (from a number of different fields) and just beautifully told stories about particular things. Turkle's introduction provides just enough background to let the essays speak for themselves, however her conclusion limits the strengths of the contributions by attempting to pigeonhole their meanings in ways that the collection otherwise evades. In its space, I would have loved for Turkle herself, whose scholarship is so concerned with identity formation in a digital age, to write about her own evocative object.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780262201681
Subtitle:
Things We Think With
Publisher:
MIT
Editor:
Turkle, Sherry
Author:
Turkle, Sherry
Author:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Location:
Cambridge
Subject:
Essays
Subject:
Social aspects
Subject:
Transitional objects (Psychology)
Subject:
Anthologies-Essays
Copyright:
Series:
Evocative Objects
Publication Date:
20070702
Binding:
Hardback
Grade Level:
from 17
Language:
English
Illustrations:
70 illus.
Pages:
400
Dimensions:
8 x 5.375 x 0.8125 in
Evocative Objects: Things We Think with
0 stars - 0 reviews
$ In Stock
Product details 400 pages Mit Press - English 9780262201681 Reviews:
"Synopsis" by , Autobiographical essays, framed by two interpretive essays by the editor, describe the power of an object to evoke emotion and provoke thought: reflections on a cello, a laptop computer, a 1964 Ford Falcon, an apple, a mummy in a museum, and other "things-to-think-with."
"Synopsis" by , Autobiographical essays, framed by two interpretive essays by the editor, describe the power of an object to evoke emotion and provoke thought: reflections on a cello, a laptop computer, a 1964 Ford Falcon, an apple, a mummy in a museum, and other & quot; things-to-think-with.& quot;
"Synopsis" by , For Sherry Turkle, We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with. In
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