ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses collecting as a narrative; not as a process about which a narrative can be told, but as itself a narrative. Cultural objects must signify through common codes, conventions of meaning-making that both producer and reader understand. Objectively, narratives exist as texts, printed and made accessible; at the same time, they are subjectively produced by writer and reader. One object must have been the first to be acquired, but then, when it was first it was not being collected - merely purchased, given or found, and kept because it was especially gratifying. Between the object and the collector stands the question of motivation, the ‘motor’ of the narrative. The act of insertion, accompanied by the act of deprivation of objecthood as well as of previous meanings, propels the plot forward as it constitutes the development of the narrative.
