ABSTRACT
In his analysis, Carroll invokes a distinction between types and tokens. For example, a specific piece of cloth on the Alamo flagstaff is not the American flag in general, but only an individual token of that general type. Mass artists create types-Danielle Steele’s novel, Coming Out, for example-while its consumers interact with tokens of the type, that is, specific objects that you see on airport bookshop shelves, for instance. To see the point of the classification, compare art that is not disseminated in mass art fashion-one-of-a-kind paintings or sculptures, for instance. In the case of Starry Night, for instance, the type-token model does not apply. In that kind of case, we acknowledge “originals,” by comparison with which reproductions are understood not to be the real thing. Starry Night can only be identified as that specifically locatable thing-the unique object hanging in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. If it is destroyed, it ceases to exist in spite of the continued possibility of printing postcard reproductions of it. By contrast, even if all existing copies of Coming Out were destroyed, the novel continues to exist as long as token instances of it can still be executed by printing presses.
