• DOI:10.1177/1359183506068808
Corpus ID: 145167639

Observed Decay: Telling Stories with Mutable Things

@article{DeSilvey2006ObservedDT,
  title={Observed Decay: Telling Stories with Mutable Things},
  author={Caitlin DeSilvey},
  journal={Journal of Material Culture},
  year={2006},
  volume={11},
  pages={318 - 338}
}

• Caitlin DeSilvey
• Published 2006
• History
• Journal of Material Culture

The degradation of cultural artefacts is usually understood in a purely negative vein: the erosion of physical integrity is associated with a parallel loss of cultural information. This article asks if it is possible to adopt an interpretive approach in which entropic processes of decomposition and decay, though implicated in the destruction of cultural memory traces on one register, contribute to the recovery of memory on another register. The article tracks the entanglement of cultural and… Expand