Neither accepted nor discarded
At last week’s session, I talked about this copy of the NKJV Bible. For the participant who gave it to me, it represents objective truth and a path to salvation. But for me it is an object of academic interest. To truly “accept” this gift is to “accept” the free gift of salvation (Graham 2015) – to become a born-again Christian.
In writing more about this gift, I realized that what is more interesting is the story of how the Bible came with me to Oxford. Like Depner’s (2013) participants, traveling to and from the UK as an international student involves balancing meaning, use-value, and logistical constraints in what to pack.
Why did I bring such a large object in my limited space? I could say I brought it to Oxford to help with my dissertation. But the Bible is available online. The real reason is because I hoped that by keeping it close, I would go some way towards paying the nebulous emotional debt to the participant that I incurred by not properly “accepting” the gift within his semiotic ideology (after Keane 2005). The thought that carrying it across the Atlantic might help is neither purely emergent from my semiotic ideology nor the participants’. It is a peculiar result of our two perspectives becoming entangled in this object.
Contributed by MaxWolf on 22/01/2023
