*Warning: Taste Tests are an attempt to explore thoughts utilizing processes similar to the creation of new recipes. We don't know what the final product will be until it's done."
Pay is grain, pork, beef &c. at the prices set by the General Court that year: money is pieces of eight, rials or Boston or Bay shillings (as they call them,) or good hard money, as sometimes silver coin is termed by them;..."
"Good hard money." How I smiled when I read that, "hard money." It's real, it's an object, it's a thing. Yet, it's not. The object consists of words written on a page. It is the expression of an idea. The pages which the idea was written are the object. It is an artifact of paper, ink and glue. But the language, thoughts and voices are not material artifacts. They are immaterial artifacts called 'ideofacts.'
How do you study the things in texts, things like money or ribbons? These are objects without physical substance in our world today. I can't go to a museum and see the silver coin Madam Knight used in 1704 while at a merchant's house. Yet through her writing, the silver coin is very real to me. It has substance, it is an object, it is a thing though it is immaterial. It is another 'ideofact.'
How do I study an 'ideofact' within an 'ideofact'? How do I examine the materiality of an immaterial object within literary texts?
From a historian's perspective, this is an important question. Historians often use texts and primary sources to research and extrapolate possible answers explaining the past. I know we do this, but what's the theory and thought process behind it? What is the approach for studying material culture in literature?
My reading list begins with Doing Cultural Studies: the Story of the Sony Walkman. I'll also include the works of Raymond Williams, Roland Barthes and Bruno Latour.
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