![]() ![]() Not that they come alive in him it is he who lives in them.” Benjamin speaks from the position of an aesthete, but what of the other position-the collector as he ought not to be? The collection always exists in tension with its potential for social instrumentalization. In his seminal essay “Unpacking My Library,” Walter Benjamin asks, “How do books cross the threshold of a collection and become the property of a collector?” For Benjamin, collecting is not a mere material practice collecting involves a particular relationship with one’s things, a sense of appreciation and responsibility toward the collection: “for a collector-and I mean a real collector, a collector as he ought to be-ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. ![]() Part of the series: “New Directions for Thing Theory in Literary Studies: A Forum.” ![]()
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