The Disorder of Things

Hoarding Narratives in Popular Media

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2993518
AutoresSusan Lepselter (0009-0009-4004-225X, autor de correspondencia)
Año2011
Volumen84
Número4
Páginas919-947
Fecha de publicación2011-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAnthropological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0003-5491 • E-ISSN: 1534-1518
EditorialProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/anq.2011.0053
OpenAlexW2033402999
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas19
Referencias citadas14

In recent years, a rise of mediated popular narratives portrays hoarders as disconnected from normal social life. Hoarders, shown as suffering from both pathological practices of overconsumption and from the inability to complete the normative purchasing cycle of disposal and re-consumption, are commonly linked to discourses of addiction. I analyze how these mediated narratives present hoarders in all the spectacular chaos of their isolation, and then therapeutically renormalize them as managed, rational agents of consumption who may rediscover the social. This paper demonstrates how multiple, transgressive behaviors become unified as a disease through the emergence of a narrative convention

Aesthetics · Art · Hoarding (animal behavior) · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Sociology · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Medicine · Psychology · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology · Social Psychology