There are so many objects on our planet that one life would not be able to list them all. Immediately produced, immediately purchased, consumed, exchanged or collected.
We live in a universe of objects and everyone travels through it in their own way, according to different customs and habits. We surround ourselves with objects out of need, whether they are utilitarian, emotional, intellectual, religious… and those we choose bear a mark, that of our identity. Let us not focus on the nature of these objects but on a system that links us to them, the collection.
My motivation for this activity was to clarify some of the human behaviours associated with it. That is why I propose that you address it. The subject is so vast and complex that it is better not to lose sight of each other.
The behaviour of collectors has been the subject of reflection and study by philosophers, psychologists and doctors. These distinguish collection addiction, which is none other than the collector’s obsession, from collectionism, which is the pathological need to collect heterogeneous and useless objects, characteristic of certain forms of obsessive neurosis. A few studies have explored the collector’s behaviour from a marketing point of view and more specifically as much as the behaviour of a very particular consumer.
The collector’s passion presents more or less strong degrees, ranging from the temporary craze linked to a fashion, to the syndrome called “collectionism” which makes the subject himself unhappy, facing a passion that devours him.
Before presenting an introduction to the subject, let’s try to find a common representation of the word “collector”:
In Larousse, the collector is a person who enjoys collecting, who makes one or more collections.
With the very origin of the word, we have what corresponds to a possible definition: Old French tells us that collecting is gathering.
And we will then say that a collection is a collection of objects on the same theme. Such a definition leads us to talk about collections for a typical passion: The search for perfection for a particular object.
In the sense of whether or not only the collector is the one who gathers what was dispersed (a collection being composed of objects linked by a common point), but above all that the goal is that one day, of this dispersion, there will be no more question of it: Final meeting, finished collection. We can therefore say of the collector that he is strong enough to group the ungroupable, to create an order (limited) to the universe around him.
“J’ai toujours aimé faire des tas. De rien du tout. Ou presque. Au début — c’était pour le feu — on amassait du bois. Les brindilles moi, je trouvais qu’elles avaient toujours une personnalité, un personnage singulier. Et je leur donnais des noms. Comme twig, brandy, pendante et dépendante, absor, gué. Et puis j’ai commencé à collectionner leurs noms aux brindilles. Je faisais des tas de noms et de mots dans ma tête. Je les allongeais, raccourcissais, je les mettais à l’envers, dans tous les sens, je les assemblais, les oubliais, les laisser disparaître, revenir, plus dur, aguerri, parfois on aurait dit des vieux combattants ou des esprits frêles. Frêle, tiens. Comme écarquille. Ou nimbe. Oh et on faisait aussi d’autres tas. On faisait des tas de tas à vrai dire. Des tas de ceci, des tas de cela. On avait des tas d’objets insolites qui s’étaient perdus dans la vie. On était un peu comme un abri pour ces esseulés, si beaux. Elles étaient ravissantes ces petites choses qu’on recueillaient un peu par hasard. Quand on s’arrêtait un instant, qu’on prenait des chemins de traverse, qu’on tombait sur une personne puis amoureux, qu’on commençait à voir flou et flottant, qu’on s’remettait dans nos flottilles à reflets, là on faisait des rencontres… on atterrissait à Artemis, zone d’errance des oubliants… “
-SA-L 