ABSTRACT
The current “material turn” in cultural and literary studies has led to a focus of interest on how objects shape our daily lives and to a shift of attention from extraordinary things to what French writer Georges Perec calls the “infra-ordinary.” This shift is reflected in a relatively new conception of museums: they were traditionally dedicated to unique and rare things, but nowadays one finds museums devoted to everyday, mass-produced objects. This article discusses three narratives that not only foreground ordinary objects, but also concern objects that inspired so much interest that they ended being displayed in real-life museums: The Madeleine project, by Clara Beaudoux, the novel The Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk, and the story of a sack filled with useful supplies that an enslaved mother gave to her young daughter as she was about to be sold away and forever separated from her mother. Displayed at the Smithsonian Museum, this sack has become a cultural icon for a society that hopes to amend for the injustices of its past by fully acknowledging and exploring this past.
