ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the story of the Persian carpet as a commodity in the book "The Metaphor of the Eye", from the aestheticization of the Persian carpet as part of Orientalia to its transnational circulation from one location to another. It traces the relationship between the image and the commodity, not limiting it to commodity fetishism but as a relation that produces sociality at all levels. As the Persian carpet moves in time and space, it gains new symbolic value. So, the story of the Persian carpet is a transnational story linking a heterogeneous assemblage of material objects, social subjects, meaning systems, and images since colonial modernity. The chapter demonstrates how crucial it is to go beyond modern dichotomies–including economy and culture, subjects and objects, work and non-work–to access the multiple folds in the story of the carpet. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
