Qualia as Value and Knowledge

Histories of European Porcelain

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8044604
AutoresGal (0000-0003-1160-6502, University of Chicago, autor de correspondencia)
Año2017
Volumen5
NúmeroS1
PáginasS128-S153
Fecha de publicación2017-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSigns and Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2326-4489 • E-ISSN: 2326-4497
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1086/690108
OpenAlexW2588426974
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas26
Referencias citadas42

Porcelain is, today, a familiar material of dishes, figurines, vases, and tiles. As commodities, they are enregistered social indexicals, so that the aphorism fits: you are what you drink, eat, or in this case eat on—or know how to admire as collector or connoisseur. This does not yet tell us, however, what qualities are picked out as shared by object and user, on what axis of social distinction. I argue that this everyday material, exactly because of the varied qualities it has been presumed to embody, has been swept up in changing regimes of knowledge, in economic strategies, and in making political and ethical discourses persuasive. In European history over the last few centuries, it has been embedded in diverse axes of differentiation, enlisted and changed not only as sign but also as material in strikingly different ontological projects

Aphorism · Qualia · Value (mathematics · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Public Spaces through Art