The Absolute Object

Abstract

There is something in our world of things that remains impossible to conquer. It remains elusive not only with respect to the legal claims of possession but even with respect to the request for symbolic appropriation that man exercises by giving a name to things. To wonder about this aspect means to think about the real nature of objects beyond their use as tools for something. These questions have rarely found expression with the same force as in the novel Il Gattopardo by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Here the virtual relationship between protagonists and objects – and also with the names themselves that guarantee objects’ appropriation – is shown as the fundamental mechanism of the anthropological machine.