ABSTRACT
This chapter synthesises Chapters 2 and 3 to establish a theory of thing-essays. The essay’s subjective and anti-systematic stance renders it a particularly suitable literary form to capture the oftentimes erratic or fragmentary associations that people gather around daily objects. I distinguish three modes of essayistic object-contemplation: The transformative mode connects an object to one particular idea and thereby enables its transformation from object to thing in the first place. The associative mode uses the essay’s anti-systematic impetus to delve into the plethora of associations that an object triggers. Lastly, the meta-reflective mode reflects on how objects turn into things from a more distanced perspective, often focusing on social forms of thingness. This typology makes it possible to gauge people’s changing attitudes to things.
