About this item
Highlights
- In Possessed, Rebecca R. Falkoff asks how hoarding--once a paradigm of economic rationality--came to be defined as a mental illness.
- About the Author: Rebecca R. Falkoff is Visiting Assistant Professor of Italian at Johns Hopkins University.
- 264 Pages
- Psychology, Psychopathology
Description
About the Book
"This book traces a cultural history of hoarding to expose the psychic, economic, epistemological, and ecological conditions of modernity"Book Synopsis
In Possessed, Rebecca R. Falkoff asks how hoarding--once a paradigm of economic rationality--came to be defined as a mental illness. Hoarding is unique among the disorders included in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5, because its diagnosis requires the existence of a material entity: the hoard. Possessed therefore considers the hoard as an aesthetic object produced by clashing perspectives about the meaning or value of objects.
The 2000s have seen a surge of cultural interest in hoarding and those whose possessions overwhelm their living spaces. Unlike traditional economic elaborations of hoarding, which focus on stockpiles of bullion or grain, contemporary hoarding results in accumulations of objects that have little or no value or utility. Analyzing themes and structures of hoarding across a range of literary and visual texts--including works by Nikolai Gogol, Arthur Conan Doyle, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Luigi Malerba, Song Dong and E. L. Doctorow--Falkoff traces the fraught materialities of the present to cluttered spaces of modernity: bibliomaniacs' libraries, flea markets, crime scenes, dust-heaps, and digital archives. Possessed shows how the figure of the hoarder has come to personify the economic, epistemological, and ecological conditions of modernity.
Thanks to generous funding from New York University and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.
Review Quotes
Falkoff shows how the collection, or amassing, of objects having little or no usefulness makes its appearance in poetry (e.g., Baudelaire), detective stories, documentary film, and installation art. She reveals the possible meanings of the hoard, as figured in such spaces as flea markets, crime scenes, and libraries. These meanings turn on themes of waste, fetishism, temporality, storytelling, and the question of value. This book's valuable perspective on the issue of hoarding will appeal to those working in cultural studies, history, and modern literature, in addition to students and professionals in psychology.
-- "Choice"Falkoff takes us on a mesmerizing transhistorical ride traversing diverse national cultures and explores the protean nature of hoarding by surveying the entire spectrum of its development from quirky fascination to mental disorder. Possessed is a deeply researched cultural history of hoarding and a masterfully written book that illuminates modern society at large and makes us all rethink our relationship with the material world in which we are immersed
-- "H-Italy, H-Net Reviews"Innovative, interdisciplinary, and experimental in spirit, Falkoff triumphs in pushing the boundaries of waste and discard studies, critically transforming the very ways in which we think about--and more significantly think through- hoards/things.Posessed makes an original contribution and poignantly amplifies the epistemological limits of hoarding.
-- "Annali d'Italianistica"Possessed is a masterly and authoritative exposition of the social history and popular culture of hoarding behavior. This is a major scholarly achievement that deals with an important subject subject in a thoughtful and thorough manner.
-- "The British Journal of Psychiatry"About the Author
Rebecca R. Falkoff is Visiting Assistant Professor of Italian at Johns Hopkins University. Follow her on X @rebeccarfalkoff and @ifiwereahoarder.