The Research Of "the Biography Of Things"

“Writing a biography for things” is the poetics ideal with unique thoughts,the research of “The biography of things” is the study of this way of writing,and the re-studies and re-analyses on this research type.Its theory foundation unites the achievements of Appadurai,Kopytoff,Myers,Frow and others;Its materials are based on a series of written texts with characteristics of biography which are historic,spectrum and cultural manifolds within nearly more than thirty years;Its feasibility and purpose of the research are to make the sporadic and episodic type materials into the biography research from the overall general which are integrated and deeply spreads out with a wide range of contents by the way of “associated-combined study”.“The biography of things” thinks that things has the independent life feature and unique meaning and value,the research of studying things is not to dismiss the position and role of people as the subject in the social history,but to place things which are not spiritual,not have consciousness and not the entities with heart construction into the relationship of culture and society,and make them be in coordination with people and achieve a state of relative equality through this way.Research on "The biography of things" should not only focus on the combination of things with social and culture,but also notice the observation and thinking over the relationship between people and things.This dissertation consists of introduction part,body part and conclusion part,and the body part consists of four chapters.The introduction part firstly talks about the research background——Material Culture Studies,and makes the corresponding matting and comb about the origin of problem;And then,making the generalization and collation about the current research status and clearing the range of the selected topic;Lastly,introducing the chapter contents and the train of thoughts.The first chapter,“The biography of things” in the Material Culture Studies.This part respectively consists of four sections with the contents of biographical materiality,cultural,life and procedural characteristics,and the main purpose is through a few large dimensions to overall grasp the content of “ The biography of things”.The materiality characteristic of “The biography of things” is obvious without doubt and it provides the mutual conformation for “The biography of things” to locate it as the branch of material cultural study.The cultural characteristic of “The biography of things” is associated with the biographical materiality and the relationship of two sides in one makes “The biography of things” located into the material cultural study solidly.The life characteristic of “The biography of things” is not only a response to Material Culture studies,but also highlights its own characteristic,and this characteristic pays more attention to the history,transition and dynamic of things,which it means the things embody the subjective value and the rewriting of the human’s fate.It is in this process,things help and even in some sense,dominate the human evolution,but on the other hand,human beings make use of things and at the same time has also been used.Therefore,the study on the procedural characteristic of “The biography of things” becomes the important content which is necessary.This section mainly talks about the common issues of “science and technology” and “the new changes of humanity” in the contemporary Material Culture Studies,the development and changes of the two aspects highlight the procedural dimension of “The biography of things”.The second chapter,the text representation of “The biography of things”.The Research of “The biography of things ” cannot be inseparable from all kinds of text representations,for it is the text representations that memorize the subjective value and the life process of things.Therefore,the core of this part presents “The biography of things” by the three aspects of literary text representation,cultural text representation and image text representation,and study the representative form and the value behind the form of “The biography of things”.Things have different functions and application values in different text representations,the texts achieve the cultural significance,display and construct the subjectivity of things,form its own cultural functions,and it is all and only proceeded by the individual specific narration of things.Therefore,the main purpose of this chapter is that knowing the cultural meaning of things by the concrete literary text;Analyzing the cultural texts to study the cultural functions and its presentation of things.Also looking the combination of things and science and technology,and the relationship between people and things by the image text.The third chapter,the poetic connotation of “The biography of things”.The problems of biographical hero and the biographical genre are the unique contents of this research,both of them interpret the poetic connotation of “The biography of things”.On the one hand,the biographical hero is not the static entity in the normal sense,but choose the heroes which are under the influence of cultural infiltration,idea’s effect and aesthetic observation;The biography literature type did not play a full role in the biography of things,so “The biography of things” is not strict standard of literary genre.As the subgenre of biography literature,“The biography of things” is ultimately to form the biographical genre with the materiality poetic meaning and materiality representation.Moreover,comparing the traditional biography with “The biography of things” from several aspects to extrude the unique genre features of “The biography of things”.The last section,the overall characteristics of “The biography of things” is through the comparison ways of “either/or” to define it,although the way is a little more simplify,it can be more easier to overall grasp “The biography of things”.The fourth chapter,the value and significance of “The biography of things”.In the cultural field,“The biography of things” mainly influences the cultural concepts,cultural mentality and cultural gender,they take particular stress on the discussion of the relationship between things and people.Because this discussion is based on the things,they influence and change the concept and mentality of people and so on.That is,culture is not only people’s culture,but also the culture of things.In the literary field,because of the appearance of this study perspective,which on the one hand literary weakens its fictionalized features gradually and increases the expectation on the reality of history;On the other hand,it also make the contemporary literary study pay attention to the research direction from the theory of social reality into the cultural constructivism,and the material dimension is more apparent.In the conclusion part,summarizing the above chapters,and further affirm the advantage and contribution of “The biography of things” and also make critical comments about the study until to the summing-up and inductive evaluation of the research of “The biography of things”.